Signia accelerates innovation to enable brilliant hearing in China, tapping opportunity at the CIIE

Signia, a globally leading hearing aids provider, is bringing its innovative hearing aids and technologies to the China market at this year's CIIE. It is leveraging the expo as a platform with an aim to support China's dual-circulation growth paradigm.

Showcasing for the second time at the CIIE, this year, Signia is making the China debut of hearing aid Styletto AX. Built on Signia's leading-edge Augmented Xperience audiology platform, Styletto AX brings outstanding speech clarity to help users achieve effective communication with the outside world.

"Signia is putting innovation as the core development strategy. The spillover efforts of the CIIE have provided us with great opportunities to introduce our leading technologies to the China market and generate win-win results. We are more than willing to integrate into China's high-quality development and promote the development of the hearing health industry in China," said Bernd Wagner, the CEO of WS Audiology China.

Signia is the high-end hearing aids brand of WS Audiology Group, which originally hails from Germany with over 140 years innovation legacy from SIEMENS Hearing and it has had a presence in China for two decades.

Signia aims to broaden its outreach in China answer to growing demands for hearing aids. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, people aged above 60 account for over 18.7 percent of the total population, driving development of the hearing aid market in China. Data also shows that 220 million Chinese people are suffering from different levels of hearing loss.

In line with a Healthy China, Signia is working to destigmatize hearing loss with its elegant and innovative products. It understands that many people find it difficult to accept they are experiencing hearing loss. Due to social stigma associated with the hearing aids, many people hesitate to use the hearing products. According to estimates by the Beijing Hearing Association, there are about 72 million hearing impaired people in China at this stage. However, the wearing rate of hearing aids is less than 5 percent, far less than that in developed countries.

However, hearing loss is irreversible, and Signia is raising awareness of the importance of hearing health. Ear and hearing health have been included in the Healthy China 2030 guidelines. Chinese regulators have also released publications to standardize hearing diagnosis and fitting of hearing aids.

"China's aging population is an opportunity for Signia. It is projected that there will be nearly 500 million potential users in the future. China is now one of the fast-growing hearing aids markets in the world with a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent over a long period of time and even more potential in the future" Wagner added."Our goal at Signia is to let more people who suffer from hearing loss live a brilliant life. Benefitting from China's vibrant, huge, and growing market environment, we are able to promote our innovative products to more people in need and enhance healthy aging in line with the Healthy China 2030 strategy."

In recent years, Signia and parent company WS Audiology have made great efforts to boost the accessibility and affordability of hearing solutions in China, in line with the group's sustainability targets. Apart from their strong presence in offline retail stores, WS Audiology is broadening its market reach by expanding its online distribution channels. In 2021, the group announced the acquisition of Longkang, the leading e-commerce company that specializes in hearing aids in China. This year, Signia opened its flagship stores on Tmall and JD.com.

Wagner emphasized, "China is a very important market for Signia. We provide Chinese customers with a complete portfolio of hearing solutions catering to different budgets and we are building the bridge for a growing number of consumers who look online to solve their hearing problems."