There's a few applications for this in places where you want to inconspicuously listen to music without appearing rude (having headphones in can be pretty damn rude).
But I feel like where this can really shine is hearing aids. These would sell like hotcakes with about 50% of the population.
Hearing aids nowadays generally just don't look too great. Which is why they tend to go the camouflage route instead.
Honestly, most people whose hearing losses are mild enough that vanity outweighs sheer need in their decision making have hearing losses that can be helped with a hearing aid that fits completely within the ear canal. These are effectively invisible (it takes a trained eye to spot them), even many hearing aids that fit behind the ear are now small enough with a thin enough wire leading into the ear canal that they are quite often simply missed by most people.
The real issue is cost. The cost issue persists despite of attempts to address cost concerns by granting people 30-day trials with full refunds if they decide to return the hearing aids, i.e. decide that the cost is not worth it. Convincing people to drop four figures on something that, by virtue of making the free and independent decision to purchase it, labels them as somebody with a disability is a hard sell. Able-bodied people don't want to give themselves the "disability" label. That's true regardless of how stylish the hearing aid is.
The situation won't change until there is greater media representation of people open with their hearing loss, living full and capable lives, to change the perception of a hearing aid to be less like a walking cane and more like vision glasses.
The other way hearing aids will become widely acceptable is by the normalisation of wearing them by everyone.
Which is already happening. The hardware in an Airpod is effectively the same as that in a hearing aid. Wearing an Airpod isn't a sign of a disability, with all the stigma that comes attached to that.
Something like these earrings blur the line even more between hearing aid and headphone. You could actually imagine wearing it all the time (including during conversations) without appearing rude - a big problem with just wearing earbuds.
The only thing missing is the software to do local DSP and amplification. It's almost certainly possible - bluetooth headphones have all the required components - but the manufacturers aren't writing the software to amplify ambient noise directly. Either because they don't believe the market is there or because they don't want to venture into the "medical devices" category that hearing aids land in, with all the added R&D expense that entails.
An "easy" solution then is for hearing aids to look like earbuds; that would normalize hearing aid; but then if you have to spend $5K on them, do you really want them to look like everyday earbuds? Quandary!
Not exactly, because it's less socially acceptable to wear AirPods in meetings and other group conversation settings, especially if people think that you're wearing them because you're actually hearing something from them. Many / most people put away their AirPods when they're in such settings, but it's exactly in those settings when people with hearing loss need their hearing aids the most.
Yes, I agree. We made our SmartEarrings™ for situations where AirPods and earbuds are not socially acceptable. And yet, in discussing hearing aids, I forgot that AirPods-as-hearing aids won't work precisely for that reason: the social cost of wearing hearables in meetings.
Hearing aids that don't look like hearing aids sounds like a great idea. Almost too obvious (only now you've said it, of course!) - I wonder if any companies already do anything along these lines?
I don't know what their capabilities are. There's a wide spectrum of hearing disabilities that need different solutions.
What you'll read below comes from second-hand experience because my dad lost his hearing in one ear after an operation.
Hearing aids aren't that expensive because of the hardware. In fact they're quite cheap to produce and because how fragile their camouflage design makes them they tend to break all the time and generally get replaced for free for life. Everything else is what makes them expensive.
Consider a hearing disability like my dad has. Complete loss of hearing in one ear after the surgical removal of a tumor on his hearing nerve (acoustic neuroma, luckily no other complications besides this expected outcome - it being pretty much brain surgery), and his other ear isn't too great either.
He spent a lot of time trying out various hearing aids for one week each while an expert guided him through the process and configured each to his needs. Because he has trouble hearing sounds that come from his deaf side he wants those transmitted to his other ear.
There is some audio processing tricks that can be applied here which will make it easier for you to gauge which side the sounds are coming from, filter out noise, amplify the voice of people you're facing etc.
The whole process of adjustments to the hearing aids and trying out different ones took 2-3 months of sometimes bi-weekly trips to the specialist.
Nowadays when a hearing aid breaks (happens from time to time, they're not very sturdy) he can go back to the specialist and walk out with a replacement already configured for him.
This is what you're paying for with the 0k-10k euro price tag (your insurance should cover the first x000 euros). The whole support experience around the hearing aids, not the aids themselves.
But I feel like where this can really shine is hearing aids. These would sell like hotcakes with about 50% of the population.
Hearing aids nowadays generally just don't look too great. Which is why they tend to go the camouflage route instead.
Making them look pretty could go a long way.