I’ll probably get roasted for this, but… my tws buds cost about 60 USD retail. That’s for two buds and a portable charger. Not much bigger than aids, build quality seems good, six microphones I think. Sure, missing a bunch of dsp that hearing aids have, but how much does that add to the build cost really (I don’t know). Small company, so I don’t think economies of scale is a factor.
That $70 per aid manufacturing cost doesn’t sound too far out of the ballpark is what I’m saying.
Actually I’m with you on this, the prices are less for sure, and this is industry wide not just Demant products.
Phillips didn’t swallow just to get their name on some HAs, Costco is selling for $1500!
Demant × Phillips × Costco=$1500
True wireless earbuds will use a readily available chipset from either Qualcomm, Mediatek or some even cheaper chip manufacturer. Furthermore, the chip manufacturer will provide a reference hardware design, reference software, reference manufacturing tools, etc. In short, the vendor only has to do the manufacturing, marketing and sales.
And because they sell to many vendors, Qualcomm and Mediatek have huge economies of scale for their chips. The same is true for Apple, they sell tons of airpods.
Hearing aid manufacturers have to develop their own chips, which they have to amortize over far fewer units shipped. And while HA chips do have specialized hardware features, they are also far LESS computationally powerful than earbud chips.
The reasons are twofold:
a) Qualcomm, Mediatek and Apple have access to (and can afford) much more modern chip manufacturing technologies than HA manufactures.
b) Power consumption: HAs have around 20mAh battery capacity and need to last a whole day. That means HAs have a power budged of less than 2mA. Earbud batteries have 40-60mAh capacity and only last 6 hours (give or take). That means Earbuds are allowed to draw roughly 10x more power than hearing aids.
As a result earbud chips can be more powerful to start with, and the vendor does not have to try and squeeze every last little bit of performance out of them. HA manufacturers do have to ‘squeeze’ and that requires more engineering resources and thus costs more money.
On top of that, HAs come in many different variations, have a multitude of receiver options and need to be way more durable than earbuds. Which means higher cost quality components, and higher manufacturing and inventory costs.
The long HA lifetime also adds cost because the HA manufacturer needs to provide service and support.
HAs are also medical devices which need to be calibrated and certified in many different jurisdictions around the world. That also costs money.
And finally, the HA vendor needs to provide software for audiologists, provide training and documentation and needs to do research for the next generation of HAs. That’s doesn’t come free either.
So no, I don’t think $70 per HA is realistic. However $250 to $300 probably is.
Or roughly where the big boys sit on the pricing curve give or take $100 profit at wholesale.