- Hi guys, Cliff Olson, doctor of audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions
in Phoenix, Arizona.
And in this video I'm talking about the shocking news
about Bose exiting the hearing aid industry
and what this could mean for the future
of over-the-counter hearing aids.
Coming up.
(energetic music)
In March of 2021 I published a video
talking about how I did not think that Bose
was actually going to come out with a hearing aid
because it had been three years
since their DeNovo marketing approval from the FDA.
Of course, that video did not age very well
because less than two months after I published it
Bose came out with their new SoundControl hearing aids
and many of you let me know about it
in the comments of that video.
Well, I wasn't wrong for very long,
because less than a year after Bose announced
the release of their new SoundControl hearing aids
they are officially getting out of the hearing aid industry,
according to a report from "The Boston Globe."
But before I speculate on why Bose is quitting
and what this ultimately means to the future
of over-the-counter direct to consumer hearing aids,
if you could do me a huge favor and click the like button,
I really appreciate it because it helps out my channel
and encourages me to make more videos just like this one.
And while you're at,
it if you have not yet hit that subscribe button
with notification bell,
go ahead and do that as well
because that ensures that you never miss
one of my newly released videos.
All that out of the way, I really appreciate it.
Now let's go ahead and talk about
what's actually going on with Bose.
Dating back to 2018 it was very clear
that Bose was a front runner in this future
over-the-counter hearing aid market.
However, Bose has one very big problem.
They have been losing money for the past several years
causing them to shut down retail locations,
as well as laying off thousands of employees
at a rapid rate.
As it turns out, losing a bunch of money,
shutting down a bunch of stores,
and laying off a bunch of employees
is not a very good recipe
for developing a new health division to create hearing aids.
It also didn't help
that their new SoundControl hearing aids,
that everybody spent over three years waiting for,
ended up being very unimpressive
because they lacked some even basic features
like rechargeability and Bluetooth connectivity,
which undoubtedly led to less than expected sales.
According to "The Globe" article,
Bose was already developing a second generation hearing aid
to replace their first generation
that was most definitely going to be more impressive
than the SoundControl hearing aids.
The only problem is they never got a chance
to bring it to market.
Instead, they followed the advice
of their McKinsey & Company consultants
which basically told them that they need to focus
on more profitable products,
which means that they needed to shut down
their health division, once again,
leaving individuals with hearing loss in the lurch.
So what does this news about Bose
tell us about the potential future
of direct to consumer/over-the-counter hearing aids
as we slowly approach the final guidelines
being published by the FDA that will establish
a new category of over-the-counter hearing aids?
The first thing I believe it tells us
is that these over-the-counter hearing aids
are gonna have to have some of the same exact features
as you find inside of prescriptive level hearing aids
to encourage individuals with hearing loss
to actually purchase them through this delivery model.
You would not believe how many of you left comments
on my review video saying how the lack of rechargeability
and lack of Bluetooth streaming capability
was a 100% deal breaker for purchasing
the SoundControl hearing aids from Bose.
It's almost as if Bose decided
to prematurely release an underdeveloped hearing aid
just to get something on the market
to silence their critics.
While I was a fan of their smartphone app
that you could use to self-adjust
your Bose SoundControl hearing aid,
it was basically the same app that you could use
in the Hearphones that were developed four years ago
that were rechargeable and had Bluetooth streaming.
Really, just because an over-the-counter hearing aid
is significantly lower cost
than a prescriptive level hearing aid,
it does not mean that you can just not have any features
inside of those devices that people want.
This brings me to my second point,
which is if you decide to play the low price game,
you're typically gonna have to sacrifice something.
One of the biggest benefits of the direct to consumer
online hearing aid delivery model
is it allows hearing aid manufacturers like Bose
to significantly reduce the cost of their technology,
making them more appealing to individuals
with affordability issues.
However, to achieve this, you either have to sacrifice
the quality of the product or you have to sacrifice
the services that are necessary
to maximize the performance of the product,
and in the case of Bose they decided to sacrifice both.
Now, maybe Bose was developing the hearing aid of the future
that would rival any other hearing aid
currently out there on the market.
The problem is, when you play the low price game,
you have to sell a ton of them
just to make a little bit of a profit.
And if you don't make a profit,
you cannot continue on selling those particular devices
and ultimately you have to discontinue them.
Okay, let's assume that they had enough profit
from the sales of their SoundControl hearing aids
in order to justify maintaining production.
They still did not have any in-office locations
in order to ensure that individuals had success
with their hearing aids and didn't return them for a refund.
This brings me to point number three,
which is it is quite apparent
that the lack of in-person services is a significant flaw
of the over-the-counter hearing aid delivery model.
And I know, I know, the whole purpose
of over-the-counter hearing aids
is to get rid of the in-person support.
One of the biggest predictors
of someone actually keeping their hearing aids
is making sure that those hearing aids
are capable of treating their hearing loss,
that those hearing aids have been properly programmed
to meet the prescription of the individual's hearing loss,
and that they have enough support going forward to make sure
that those hearing aids continuously work the right way.
I personally believe that this is the reason why
we still do not have a major player
in the direct to consumer online hearing aid market,
even with no regulation whatsoever.
I mean, these companies just cannot figure out a way
how to get consumers to keep these hearing aids
rather than sending them back for a refund
due to lack of perceived benefit.
Without these direct to consumer hearing aid companies
having anywhere to send their patients
to get professional help or to have them
get more appropriate hearing aids
for their level of hearing loss,
they basically just have to give them a refund
and never hear from them again.
This is likely what happened to Bose.
Because if you have something that is more significant
than a mild to moderate level hearing loss
and you purchase these devices
thinking they were gonna work for you
and they didn't work for you,
you're basically just gonna send them back
for a full refund.
And when you consider all of the costs
that go into acquiring you as a customer,
having to help you try to set them up
virtually without success,
and then having to process your refund,
that is very expensive for a company
that makes no money off of you.
I know that nobody wants to pay more money for hearing aids,
but if you actually want hearing aids to work for you
the best they possibly can,
then you need to have best practice audiologic care
for whatever hearing aid you're going to use.
Now, if you do not know what best practices are,
then I highly recommend that you check out my video
that I will link in the description
because best practices are the only way to ensure
that you maximize your performance
with whatever hearing aids you decide to use.
If you want to find a hearing care professional
who follows best practices,
I suggest you find a Best Practice Pro member near you.
Best Practice Pros are committed
to following comprehensive best practices
to ensure that you receive the maximum amount of benefit
out of your hearing aids.
The easiest way to find a Best Practice Pro member near you
is to go to my website, DrCliffAud.com,
and click on the Find a Local Provider tab
to search for a Best Practice Pro member in your area.
This brings me to point number four,
which is a lot of the wrong people
are purchasing direct to consumer hearing aids.
As it turns out a heck of a lot of individuals
who have more severe of a hearing loss
than just mild to moderate are trying to purchase
these direct to consumer hearing aids
only to find out that they get no benefit from them.
I mean, the entire goal of these direct to consumer/
over-the-counter hearing aids was to appeal
to the mild to moderate hearing loss individual.
And as it turns out, it seems like this particular group
of individuals with this severity of hearing loss
just do not wanna get hearing aids.
According to a few anecdotal reports that I've heard,
apparently Bose was having 2/3rds of the hearing aids
that they were dispensing come back
and they were having to issue a refund for.
This basically means that these hearing aids
were either horrible or they did not actually meet the needs
for the individuals who were purchasing them.
Regardless, I'm starting to think
that this mild to moderate perceived hearing loss group
of individuals is gonna be very, very difficult to tap into
with this type of technology,
or any technology for that matter.
And the fifth and final takeaway
that I got from this cautionary Bose tale
is that over-the-counter/direct to consumer hearing aid
delivery models are not that easy.
Like I mentioned earlier, everybody viewed Bose
as this front runner ahead of everybody else
when it came to over-the-counter hearing aids
because of their track record of good audio equipment.
But at the end of the day,
we all learned very quickly that it is not that easy.
I mean, they had the money,
they had the engineering talent
to make something completely amazing,
and they had the marketing department
to encourage individuals with hearing loss
to purchase these devices and they still couldn't do it.
Of course, having strong economic headwinds
probably didn't help.
But if a nearly $4 billion consumer electronics company
like Bose could not make over-the-counter hearing aids work,
then how is anyone else gonna make it work?
While I do believe and hope that a company
will eventually develop an over-the-counter hearing aid
that will gain mainstream acceptance,
I believe that it is going to be
a very long and expensive road in order to get there.
And even more important than that,
the company that figures this out
will have to be passionate about treating hearing loss
rather than just viewing over-the-counter hearing aids
an easy money grab because if they don't,
they're gonna follow in the exact same footsteps as Bose
who has focused more on profitability
than they were on serving the hearing loss community.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
If you like the video, please share it.
And if you wanna see other videos just like this one,
go ahead and hit that subscribe button.
Also feel free to check out my website, DrCliffAud.com.
(upbeat music)