Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SonicEdge (A New Way of Generating Sound - The new loud speaker component and technology)

Teaser

SonicEdge has developed a unique technology for generating sound. The new technology, modulated ultrasound speaker (MUSE), provides better sound quality from a smaller speaker. The potential product applications of the technology are very broad spanning from hearing aids...

Summary

SonicEdge has developed a unique technology for generating sound. The new technology, modulated ultrasound speaker (MUSE), provides better sound quality from a smaller speaker. The potential product applications of the technology are very broad spanning from hearing aids to high end sound systems. The goal of the business study was
- Map the potential market
- Identify relevant customers and discuss with them the required process to integrate the SonicEdge speaker in the customer’s products
- Chart the manufacturing eco system and identify relevant partners for manufacturing the SonicEdge speaker
From the above discussions we constructed a detailed business plan. SonicEdge preferred initial market segment is the earphone market in which the SonicEdge speaker replaces existing micro-speakers or balanced armature transducers. Discussions with customers verified the need in the industry for better transducers and the potential of SonicEdge to disrupt the market. The product manufacturing route was defined, and the required plan and budget for bringing the SonicEdge speaker to market was constructed.

Studies show that over 450M people in the world population suffer from hearing loss, where only about 20% of them use hearing aids mainly due to the costs of the units. In addition, the hearing aids today, which are improving constantly, still have a bottle neck of the audio quality provided by the hearing aid speaker. SonicEdge find MUSE as a potential solution for those issues. By hearing aids using the MUSE technology the hearing aid user should enjoy better quality of life in terms of quality of sound which is closer to the natural and lower priced heating aid.

SonicEdge objective is to provide the population suffering from hearing loss a high-quality solution with an affordable price tag. For SoncEdge to achieve this objective, it needs to manufacture its products in mass production for the hearing aid brands.

Work performed

SonicEdge has achieved the following:
- Decide on the 1st market segment for MUSE technology.
- Defined a preliminary specification of the product.
- Developed a business model
- Identified the manufacture partners and started engaging with them.
- Identified the potential customers and started engaging with some of them.
- Built a detailed work plan towards a high volume manufacturing.
- All the above was written in a business plan.

Final results

SonicEdge long term objectives are improving the quality of life of those suffering from hearing loss and make it affordable to them.
We assume that the MUSE technology can also be applied to the consumer market and may be applied to that market in the next generations of the product.