International Data Corporation (IDC) has published a new IDC Innovators report profiling three companies – Bragi, Nuheara, and Waverly Labs – for taking a traditional audio-centric hearable device and augmenting it with new features and functionalities.

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Over the past five years, consumers have adopted wearable devices through fitness trackers and smartwatches. More recently, the introduction of new business and enterprise applications have started to bring these devices into the workplace. The same trend can be seen within a fast-growing segment of the smart earwear market, also known as hearables, where new capabilities are being added to the devices that expand the ways in which people communicate, reports Business Wire.

Hearables are technically advanced, electronic in-ear-devices designed for purposes ranging from wireless transmission to communication objectives, medical monitoring and fitness tracking. Hearables must also provide language translation on the device; and enable smart assistants at the touch of a button or through keyword detection, even if the assistant is running on another device.

“Hearables are quickly becoming the hot product within the wearables market, and while many focus on streaming audio and making phone calls, these companies help their wearers with personal and/or professional productivity,” said Ramon T. Llamas, research director with IDC's Mobile Devices team. “Two of these companies recognize and help solve the challenges that some people have simply to communicate, and the third adds new AI-based functionalities to other companies' hearable devices. The end result: wearers who communicate more easily and devices with extended usage and life cycles.”

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Here are what the 3 companies profiled in the report offer:

• Bragi helps its customers to develop smart audio products by enabling hearables to execute computing and data analysis on the device instead of the cloud using the smallest amount of power and memory.
• Nuheara is a hearing healthcare company that has developed situational-use hearable devices that augment a wearer's hearing in real time with amplification, noise reduction, and audio beamforming.
• Waverly Labs offers a hearable device that translates 20 languages in close to real time and expands the experience from understanding someone speaking in a foreign language to a two-way conversation.

IDC Innovators reports present a set of vendors – under $100 million in revenue at time of selection – chosen by an IDC analyst within a specific market that offer an innovative new technology, a groundbreaking approach to an existing issue, and/or an interesting new business model.

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