Sources: Apple is exploring adding health-related features to AirPods, including for enhancing hearing, reading body temperature, and monitoring posture
Earbuds could be offered as hearing aids and include an in-ear thermometer and posture warnings — Apple Inc. is studying ways …
Wall Street JournalRolfe Winkler
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's wearable-health push was already centered on Watch, where the company was reportedly considering blood-pressure and fertility-temperature capabilities. AirPods would extend that work into an always-worn audio device rather than leave health sensing to the wrist.
Apple's AirPods team must evaluate whether hearing enhancement, in-ear temperature readings, and posture alerts can be delivered through earbuds without turning the product into a separate health-device line.
Apple's health roadmap gains a second wearable surface alongside Watch, with AirPods aimed at audio- and ear-based functions rather than wrist-based measurements.
Second-order effects
The overlap between AirPods temperature work and the reported Watch temperature plans raises the value of coordinating health features across Apple's wearable portfolio rather than treating each device as an isolated accessory.
Positioning earbuds as hearing aids would shift AirPods feature development toward health-oriented software and validation, not only audio improvements.
Third-order effects
Apple's subsequent AirPods hearing update suggests a broader wearable strategy in which health functions are distributed across devices according to where each sensor can operate best.
If Apple continues adding health functions to AirPods and Watch, the boundary between consumer accessories and health-focused wearables becomes increasingly defined by software features across a device ecosystem.
The trend: Apple is broadening wearable health from a Watch-led effort into a multi-device platform that assigns sensing and assistance features to AirPods as well as the wrist.
Apple is talking internally about the possibility of marketing AirPods as hearing aids while FDA works on the new OTC rules, expected to be announced shortly and finalized sometime next year.
The last, hearing aids, could be one of Apple's most impactful health offerings on any device in the next few years. If it happens. As always, no guarantee features/ideas being studied actually roll out.
The regs plus an oligopoly of providers keeps prices high. Lawmakers in both parties pushed for change and a 2017 law requires FDA to create a new category of OTC hearing aids, paving the way (advocates hope) for companies like Apple to officially enter the market.
Apple can't market them for hearing loss because federal law says companies can't market hearing aids direct to consumers. Mostly they must be sold via licensed providers like audiologists.
AirPods Pro have no such stigma, cost a fraction of that and already have multiple features that improve hearing. Experts tell me AirPods Pro don't have the battery life nor amplification to help with severe hearing loss, but AirPods can work well for less severe cases they say.
There are 30m+ Americans suffering mild\moderate hearing loss who don't wear hearing aids, which can cost $5,000 or more and often aren't covered by insurance. Not to mention the old age stigma that goes with them.
Look, *if* the FDA finally acts to make a new category of over the counter hearing aids AND Apple gets approval to include AirPods in this category.... This will be a big deal for people's health and well being. by @RolfeWinkler https://www.wsj.com/...