True Wireless Headphones Clearing Path for Advanced SoC-Based Hearables: SAR

The rapid growth of true wireless headphone sales is driving innovation in the hearables category which, enabled by SoC designs, will develop into a platform that’s less dependent on the smartphone, said a Friday SAR Insight report. “Headphones will eventually become separate untethered devices, rather than conduits for other devices,” and increased functionality will lead to new applications in entertainment and healthcare, it said. “We will see much more processing power encapsulated within the headphones than we do now,” said analyst Joe Hoffman. Services that require low latency, such as noise cancellation and wake word identification, will reside in the earbud, while the heavy processing takes place “in a mobile phone or even the cloud.” Much of the headphone ecosystem is in place as consumers have embraced true wireless earbuds and shown a willingness to “talk to their devices with digital assistants,” Hoffman said. “The earbud is a perfect place to install the biosensors for health monitoring applications, with temperature and motion sensing in the ear canal, providing more intimate and accurate detection than on the wrist,” he said.