Assistive Listening Knowledge Base
  • Paper (trade-journal summary of an industry consumer survey)

MarkeTrak 2025: Hearing Aids in the Age of OTCs and Wearables

From https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/sobek-dobyan-2025/ · record checked 14 October 2026

  • Sobek Dobyan B, Powers TA
  • Hearing Review 32(4):8-14 (July/August 2025 issue)

Trade body (MarkeTrak is commissioned by the Hearing Industries Association, the US hearing aid industry's association; the first author is HIA's executive director and the second runs a consultancy serving the hearing health industry)

Summary

First results of MarkeTrak 2025, the US hearing aid industry's consumer survey, including the features hearing aid owners say their devices have.

Key findings

  • Of hearing aid owners who bought in the previous five years (n=887), 24% said their hearing aid has a telecoil, 47% said it does not and 29% were not sure. The question describes the telecoil as being for the telephone or public places with a hearing loop.
  • The authors report that owners' knowledge of several features, telecoils among them, fell compared with MarkeTrak 2022.
  • Wireless capability (direct smartphone streaming, linking, or streaming through an accessory) rose from 63% of owners in 2022 to 70%, and 54% have a downloadable app, up 10 points.
  • Owners ranked volume control, rechargeability, a downloadable app and direct smartphone streaming as the four most impactful features.
  • The Examining Hearing Difficulty section describes an online survey fielded by Az Marketing Research in October and November 2024 across 16,148 US households, balanced and weighted to census characteristics; 2,955 people with self-reported hearing difficulty answered the detailed part, 1,173 of them hearing aid owners.

Limits

An industry-commissioned survey summarised by HIA's own director; the full data were to be published later in Seminars in Hearing. Features are self-reported, and the telecoil figure is in a table image rather than the text. It does not ask about Auracast or venue assistive listening systems.

Read the original

hearingreview.com/inside-hearing/research/marketrak-2025-hearing-aids-in-the-age-of-otcs-and-wearables

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Cited in

Cite this source

Sobek Dobyan B, Powers TA. MarkeTrak 2025: Hearing Aids in the Age of OTCs and Wearables. Hearing Review 32(4):8-14 (July/August 2025 issue). 13 August 2025. https://hearingreview.com/inside-hearing/research/marketrak-2025-hearing-aids-in-the-age-of-otcs-and-wearables (accessed 14 October 2026).

The accessed date is when this library last checked the link; use the date you read it. To point readers to this summary instead, link to https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/sobek-dobyan-2025/

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