It’s definitely NOT about just music. In theory, the new BT standard will allow airports, shopping malls, churches, training and education facilities, and other public places to overcome the limitations of public address systems, especially in facilities with unfriendly acoustics, with much better quality BT transmissions.
BUT, my local Costco audi told me yesterday at my testing and buying appointment that he believes it will take a LONG time for any significant number of businesses to actually see and understand the advantages, and spend the money to equip themselves to do it.
Given that in our city of 100,000 population there are apparently very few T-coil loops, I see his point. The order I placed yeterday for the Jabra Enhanced Pro 20 (the model that just was released days ago) will bring me that new BT capabilty, but it might seriously be time for a replacement hearing aid before having that capability actually be an advantage.
But the ReSound response is curious, because both the Jabra and the ReSound products are in the same manufacturer’s (GN) group of brand names. And, the ReSound brand name is supposed to be the “flagship” line that ReSound would prefer to sell because the profit margin there is much higher due to selling through the hearing clinic channels. So it seems very odd that the Jabra product line would have a feature that the ReSound product line does not.
Perhaps this is just a temporary situaiton, caused by the newest Jabra product being ready to market before the newest ReSound product being ready to market?
I can see how that could be the case. Costco would want that new BT feature (along with any other improvements we may not yet know about) asap, and has the clout to insist on it. Costco’s high sales volume and sophisticated “just in time” delivery management, also means there is not a large inventory of EXISTING MODEL Jabra HAs in the supply chain at any point in time. I noted in my own case of ordering a Jabra Enhanced Pro 20 at Costco yesterday that Costco doees NOT sotck them at store level, but gets them in AND programmed pretty quickly (13 days) considering the logistics of product distribution in a country (Canada) of only 38 million people in a country that is 5000 kilometers wide.
However, the sales channel of chain hearing clinics sells off existing OLD product inventory much more slowly (Premium pricing will do that for virtually ANY product - that’s one of the penalties of premium pricing). ReSound would not want to publicly introduce a new model that would cannibalize sales of existing models already and still in the supply chain. So, there may well be an upgraded ReSound product line ready to go, but being held back until the supply chain manages to clear out most if not all of the inventory of EXISTING models.
Jim G