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Sonova's CEO announces that a new Phonak platform will be released this year (2026)

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The subtitle contains a typo that states “2024,” but the article actually refers to a new platform that will be released later this year.
(I don’t know why the link below shows in Swedish, the article is in English"

Eric Bernard, CEO of Sonova, shared this news last week during a virtual meeting with analysts and the media, where he and the rest of the management team presented a new strategy for the company.
“We will continue to maintain a very consistent pace of innovation, and we will launch a new platform before the end of the calendar year,” said Bernard.

Sonova vil indhente efterslæb i Asien med ny tofaset vækststrategi207

”At lade være med at tænke Asien ind i de næste fem til ti år vil efter min opfattelse være en betydelig strategisk fejl,” lyder det fra den adm. direktør i verdens største høreapparatkoncern.

24 people in this conversation16 min readJump to latest

If I was to hazard a guess, I would predict that the new Sonova platform will integrate the sphere functionality into a single chip to improve battery life and reduce case size.

New Platform and new models are two different things, updated models are not a new platform, so they’ll need to drop infinio name with new chips to truely call something a “New Platform” but Phonak are well known for their shapeshifting and tricky dick terminology on what they consider totally New releases.

Edited
@Bimodal_user said:

EDIT:
Spice - Jan 2011; Spice+ - Nov 2011
Quest - Oct 2012
Venture - Oct 2014
Belong - Sept 2016
END OF EDIT.

Marvel - Oct 2018
Paradise - Aug 2020
Lumity - Aug 2022
Infinio - Aug 2024.

Just as I suspected:

XXXXX platform - Xxx 2026

“Citi estimates that any launch would take place no earlier than mid-2026 and no later than September, Marketwire reported.”

There is also mentioned about Oticon, which also should release new platform.

Edited

I’d be more excited if Phonak said there would be new products coming this year, versus just mentioning a new platform. Feel free to correct, but a new Phonak platform seems to refer to a new operating system rather than a new style of aid. Hopefully, I’m wrong since Phonak needs to upgrade some of their older aids.

@tenkan said:

but it’s just on past form Phonak can be a bit loose on this term

Sometimes the new platform recycles the hardware and you get new software with measurable improvement, but not enough to get upgrades out of people with the previous release. I think Lumity was widely considered to be Paradise with a little polishing. Regardless, the new platform is released in Audeo first, and then usually Naida is about a year later, and then Virto not long before the next platform’s release. I was quite surprised to see some virto models released at almost the same time as the audeo (they were announced at the same time but held back a few months for some reason.)

WH

New Phonak Naida could have a strong market demand, especially if Oticon and other hearing aid manufacturers exit the power hearing aid market. It looks like things are going in that direction. Unfortunately.

Edited

So the new platform will include a new “system for earwax removal”. Sounds nifty.

Edit: Correction. That earwax removal system came with the Ultra upgrade.

Edited

@Ocramsagev, thanks for posting the article from Medwatch. It looks like 2026 will be full of new models of hearing aids. Widex, Phonak and Oticon will continue to offer new models every two years or so. Really, all the biggies will be doing so I guess.

It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the research labs of the companies coming up with this stuff. Now that is firmly embedded in the industry, I would guess that significant refinements are a weekly or monthly occurrence. Unlike the pharmaceutical industry, the industry does not have to go through the same type of expensive and lengthy testing in order to gain approval by the various national drug approval agencies.

There’s never been a better time to be hard of hearing. (Probably not a phrase likely to be used in promo’s.)

@portage said:

There’s never been a better time to be hard of hearing.

Agree. It’s a pity that this wasn’t around 15–20 years ago, when I started college.

In reply to @portage

@portage said:

Unlike the pharmaceutical industry, the HA industry does not have to go through the same type of expensive and lengthy testing in order to gain approval by the various national drug approval agencies

Hold up, the manufacturers are getting a bit itchy on the new regulations, they think it could possibly hinder some of this going forward, hopefully not.

Demant-topchef kommer med advarsel om nye AI-regler i EU25

Den danske høreapparatkoncern Demant frygter mere bureaukrati og svækket konkurrencekraft, mens brancheorganisationer ser risiko for længere godkendelser og tabt eksport.

Tenkan, Uh-oh. In a struggle that could be dubbed, The Bureaucracy Fights Back, will be making some in their number redundant, but bureaucrats have a card or two up their sleeves.

Bimodal_user, Yes, I agree, some sort of attempted government regulation of is good, and inevitable. (Whether successful or doomed, I bet on doomed.) But from the article in Medwatch, it appears the industry fears being enveloped by that millennia old military term, the pincer movement.

One law addresses medical devices, another AI.

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