Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman says Apple’s AirPods could gain more prominent hearing health features over the next few years. Gurman’s comments came in this week’s edition of his “Power On” newsletter.
Gurman said that he believes Apple will “upgrade the AirPods to become a health tool in the next year or two,” with “the ability to get hearing data of some sort.”
While Apple’s AirPods already offer hearing-focused features, including Live Listen and Conversation Boost. However, as noted by Gurman, such features are not yet FDA-approved or designed to serve as a hearing aid replacement. He expects AirPods to offer this functionality “more officially” in the near future.
Gurman is not the first to say that Apple will be adding new health-focused features to its AirPods, as Apple industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has been quoted as saying the company will add biometric health monitoring capabilities to future AirPods.
Recent Apple patent filings show Apple is working on an AirPod-based fitness monitoring system integrating an advanced biometric sensor to detect physiological metrics including temperature, heart rate, perspiration levels, and more.
The new health capabilities won’t necessarily be dependent on the release of new AirPods, since current AirPods already include the equipment to support some of the features and could possibly be enabled via a firmware update.