Auracast™ Retrofit Solutions
and Opportunities

Retrofit Solutions and Opportunities

According to the report, there are more than 60 million venues globally that could potentially benefit from assistive listening or augmented audio experiences. Some of these venues may support multiple use cases, ranging from assistive listening solutions to silent TV use cases, or the emergence of new audio experiences. With the potential for multiple audio transmitters per venue, this equates to a large potential total addressable market (TAM) for retrofit Auracast™ broadcast audio solutions.

The report goes on to note that long replacement cycles mean that it could take several years before these audio systems, silent TVs, and other public audio sources are embedded with Auracast™ broadcast audio capabilities. Fortunately, there’s an interim solution. New Auracast™ receivers can be combined with applications that can run on legacy smartphones to accelerate the market, letting companies ship Auracast™ earbuds today, increasing market reach, and growing user awareness.

Retrofitted solutions offer the promise to enable both new consumer-facing and assistive listening experiences without needing to wait to replace existing audio systems with ones embedded with Auracast™ broadcast audio. When compared to alternative assistive listening technologies, Auracast™ broadcast audio solutions can be deployed simply, at a comparatively low cost, and provide unique audio experiences to users of both assistive listening devices and mainstream consumer headsets.

Major benefits of creating retrofitted transmitter solutions include:

• The ability for venues to enable hearing accessibility and enhanced visitor experiences relatively simply without the need to replace or upgrade all devices
• Multi-functional transmitters/dongles can be used for both public and personal use cases within the home. This can help reduce design complexity, enable shared development cycles, and bring greater return on investment (ROI)
• Personal and public venue Auracast™ deployments have the potential to benefit each other while using similar solutions that can enable sources and receivers to transmit and hear Auracast™ broadcast audio streams

The ABI Research report outlines various hardware options and solutions tailored to specific use cases, evaluates market potential across various venue types, and maps specific use cases to venues that are particularly conducive to retrofit solutions.

See the full report.