MEMS Microspeakers Made from Silicon
fraunhofer.de
fraunhofer.de
Traditional speakers in BT earbuds if I recall correctly take more space since there’s a volume component. They also would take more power than a MEMS solution would. If they get it to production and audio quality is good, this could be quite huge.
By comparison an AirPod pro is 20mm^2 by 30mm in height so this would allow a significant miniaturization and power savings/larger battery. Ultimately the quality of the audio will be key and my guess is that’s the primary obstacle between it’s current PoC state and production.
Going by the simplistic diagram on the page it looks like it bears some degree of similarity to planar drivers. That's an extremely good starting point.
> Wireless in-ear headphones [...] are still relatively large and many of their components drain the battery quickly, restricting internet connectivity, payment functions and other smart features.
One can venture to guess this is a poor translation where original authors were hinting at all-digital signal path system, something that together with encryption is already available as DRM for video (HDCP), but not for audio yet.