The arrival of Bluetooth LE Audio is set to transform the Bluetooth® audio ecosystem over the next five-to-ten years. Arguably, the most significant new capability enabled by the release of LE Audio is Auracast™ broadcast audio. Thanks to LE Audio’s broadcast capabilities, audio transmitters can broadcast one or several audio streams to an unlimited number of Auracast™ receivers, such as headsets and hearing aids. This will help create new ways to interact with our environments, improve visitor experiences, and offer scalable assistive listening solutions that could eventually supersede existing options and open up wider accessibility for people with hearing loss.

Recently, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) partnered with ABI Research to outline the potential trends and impacts Auracast™ broadcast audio will have on the market. The following excerpt is from the published Bluetooth market research note: LE Audio: The Future of Bluetooth® Audio.

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New Market Opportunities Enabled by Auracast™ Broadcast Audio

Opportunities for Auracast™ broadcast audio are enormous with the technology envisioned to be leveraged across a wide number of public locations. This could include conference and lecture halls, theatres and cinemas, airports and transportation hubs, museums, places of worship, and, eventually, in one-to-one type deployments within retail and other service environments. According to the World Health Organization, over 1.5 billion people globally (nearly 20 percent of the population) live with hearing loss. This is anticipated to grow to 2.5 billion as early as 2050. Bluetooth LE Audio has the potential to significantly build upon and complement existing assistive listening solutions and open up Auracast™ broadcast audio to many new venues and regions that currently have limited or no assistive listening infrastructure.

2210 LE Audio NOTE Chart 4

Auracast™ Broadcast Audio Market Forecasts

Given where we are in the development timeline of Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast™ broadcast audio, it is still early to establish concrete forecasts on how rapidly the industry will adopt Bluetooth LE Audio across both the transmitter and receiver devices, alongside Auracast™ broadcast audio deployments within public locations, and other enterprise use cases. The speed of the rollout of Bluetooth LE Audio solutions in the source and sink devices will have a direct impact on the deployment of Auracast™ broadcast audio solutions in public venues. As theBluetooth LE Audio source and sink installed base grows, so too will the opportunities for Auracast™ broadcast audio solutions to be increasingly deployed.

In order to understand the potential addressable market for Auracast™ broadcast audio, ABI Research has developed a forecasting model based on global venue market sizing built from a regional model of establishments combined with projected adoption of Auracast™ broadcast audio solutions across different use cases. Here, we have taken into account anticipated penetration across different regions, different timelines for different use cases, and different numbers of transmitters per deployment based on building sizes and the number of potential buildings / rooms per establishment.

According to ABI Research, there are just over 61 million establishments globally that could take advantage of Auracast™ broadcast audio. By 2030, this number will increase to 64 million thanks to new building growth. However, as Chart 4 previously demonstrated, it will take some time for the ecosystem of Bluetooth LE Audio source and sink devices to develop. ABI Research expects the major inflection point to occur around 2025. Thereafter, there will be additional incentive for venues to start deploying Auracast™ broadcast audio. By this point, the technology will be more familiar, transmitter devices will be more readily available, and the installed base of Bluetooth LE Audio-enabled devices will have reached a critical mass. Therefore, ABI Research expects a more rapid deployment of Auracast™ broadcast audio solutions towards the end of the decade.

2210 LE Audio NOTE Chart 6

As Chart 6 shows, in this early phase of development, ABI Research expects silent TVs and augmented / assistive listening in public venues to drive Auracast™ broadcast audio adoption. In public assembly buildings, all five major use cases will be relevant; however, by 2030 the majority will come from silent TV screens, assistive listening, and multi-language support. Religious worship will primarily be assistive listening use cases, while restaurants will primarily be silent TV screens in bars and other venues. ABI Research also expects that many other innovative ways of deploying Auracast™ broadcast audio will emerge for both assistive listening and augmented hearing applications over the next decade

To learn more about how Bluetooth LE Audio will help establish new use cases and consumer experiences, open the audio ecosystem to new industry players, and enable the Bluetooth audio market to scale to new heights, read the full report: LE Audio: The Future of Bluetooth® Audio.

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LE Audio: The Future of Bluetooth® Audio

See how the arrival of Bluetooth LE Audio is set to transform the Bluetooth audio ecosystem and the impact it will have on Bluetooth® audio market forecasts.

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LE Audioの登場によって、Bluetooth®オーディオのエコシステムは今後5年から10年の間に大きく塗り替えられることになります。そしてLE Audioの最も重要な新機能といえるのが、Auracast™ブロードキャスト オーディオです。LE Audioのブロードキャスト機能は、Auracast™送信機が1つまたは複数のオーディオストリームでAuracast対応受信機にブロードキャスト通信を行えます。受信機のヘッドセットや補聴器などの台数に制限はありません。これにより、ユーザーと周囲の環境との間に新しい関わり方をもたらします。いずれは、施設を訪問する人々に充実したサービスを提供するだけでなく、現行のシステムが拡張性のある聴覚補助システムへと置き換えが進み、難聴者に幅広いアクセシビリティを提供するでしょう。

先日Bluetooth SIGは、Auracast™ ブロードキャスト オーディオについて考えられる市場のトレンドと影響の概要についてABI Researchに調査を依頼しました。以下に、これを受けて公開されたBluetooth市場調査レポート「LE Audio:Bluetooth® Audioの未来」から一部抜粋してご紹介します。

Auracast™ ブロードキャスト オーディオがもたらす市場の新たな可能性

Auracast™ブロードキャスト オーディオには大きな可能性があります。コンベンション会場や講堂、劇場や映画館、空港や交通拠点、博物館、礼拝施設、そして将来的には小売店舗などのサービスの場における1対1での使用をはじめ、さまざまな公共の場面での活用が考えられています。WHO(世界保健機関)によると、世界の難聴者の数は15億人を超えます(世界人口の20%近く)。この数字は、早ければ2050年に25億人に増えると予測されています。LE Audioは既存の聴覚補助技術を大きく強化、補完できる可能性があり、現在は聴覚補助の設備が限られている、または設備のない施設や地域でAuracast™ ブロードキャスト オーディオの利用を可能にしています。

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