Hearing impairment is not uncommon in real life, but it has not always been a concern of the market.

According to estimates by the Beijing Hearing Association, there are about 72 million hearing impaired people in China at this stage. However, the wearing rate of hearing aids is less than 5%, which is far from developed countries. There are a large number of hearing-impaired patients whose quality of life is affected but there is nothing to do. Few adjuvant treatment options plague many hearing-impaired patients.

As an industry related to the quality of life of tens of millions of Chinese people, the hearing aid market has also begun to attract innovative entrants.

At present, hearing aids and cochlear implants are one of the few hearing aids known to the public, but as auxiliary devices, the wearing rate of hearing aids in China is far lower than that of myopia or reading glasses. In fact, the needs of people with different vision impairments, such as myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, and presbyopia, are different, and the needs of hearing impaired patients also have their differences. In addition, at the psychological level of patients, hearing impaired patients want to protect their hearing defects.

In China, there is a huge gap between the hearing therapy industry and developed countries. There are even comments that the current development of the hearing industry is equivalent to the dental industry ten or even twenty years ago.

“At present, domestically-made equipment is very weak in the hearing industry. Hearing aids are the most commonly used in the field of hearing, which is also the most used hearing equipment. However, domestic brands have a domestic market share, and statistics say that it is less than 10%. The figure obtained is about 5%. In fact, the situation is similar in high-end bone conduction hearing devices such as cochlear implants. This is an area that needs attention and investment in the domestic medical community, business community, and equipment capital.” Pu Qiangling, the co-founder and CEO of Tuo Medical, said in an interview with a reporter from China Business News.

According to FortuneBusinessInsights statistics, the global hearing aid market in 2018 was 8.39 billion U.S. dollars (approximately RMB 59.36 billion), and is expected to reach 14.45 billion U.S. dollars (approximately RMB 102.24 billion) by 2026, a compound annual growth rate during the forecast period The rate is 7.2%.

In China, the size of the hearing aid market has grown from 1.123 billion yuan in 2009 to 4.285 billion yuan in 2017. It is estimated that by 2022, the output of my country’s hearing aid industry will reach nearly 30 million.

However, most of the hearing aids currently on the market are low-end products, with few product innovations and low technical content. There are few domestic companies that can produce high-end hearing aid products. From the perspective of product technology, domestic companies produce less than 10% of the world’s advanced level of products. The domestic high-end hearing aid market is still a gap that needs to be filled urgently.

According to Prudence, the current hearing market is highly monopolized, and the air conduction technology route is more popular. Among them, six air conduction hearing aid international companies such as Sivantop (formerly Siemens) and Resound monopolize 80% to 90% of the market.

The remaining 10% is divided by many domestic small and medium-sized enterprises distributed in different regions, including Lingkang, Ou Shida, Xinsheng, Huier, Aikesheng, Listening Dream and so on. At present, there is no listed company among domestic companies focusing on the hearing aid market. Among the above-mentioned companies, some rely heavily on equipment manufacturing, and some focus on the market.

WinTo has been developing the hearing aid function headphones since 2020, and we are planning to enter into the market from 2022.