South Africa’s hearing aid market might be in for a big shake-up: Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 hearing aid functionality is now available in South Africa.

Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 were set apart from other Bluetooth earbuds in the market when US regulators last September approved their use as hearing aids, opening up a potentially lucrative new market for the California-based technology giant.

Tech journalist Nafisa Akabor revealed recently on her Recharged website that the hearing aid feature is available for South African iPhone and iPad users.

“The hearing aid feature specifically applies to the AirPods Pro 2 model, with either USB-C charging or the Lightning connector, running the latest firmware version 7B21. Your iPhone or iPad also needs to be updated,” she wrote.

Hearing health settings, which include an optional hearing test, can be found in the AirPods Pro 2 submenu in the iPhone’s settings. The functionality only works in conjunction with iOS 18 or iPadOS 18.

According to the Apple website, hearing aid functionality for users in any jurisdiction outside the US is only made available to users once local health authorities have made similar approvals. South Africa is not included in the list of already-approved markets on the site. A quick search through the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority’s medical device database returns no results for the AirPods Pro 2 either.

Priced to go

That being said, there is a huge underserved market in South Africa’s hearing-impaired community that the AirPods Pro 2 earbuds have the potential to service. Speaking to TechCentral last September, De Wet Swanepoel, professor in the department of speech-language pathology at the University of Pretoria, said that the cost of hearing aids ranges from R10 000 to a staggering R100 000.

In the public sector, the devices are freely available, but patients are usually put off by the long waiting list. And in the private sector, many are priced out of the market, with medical aids rarely covering the full cost of hearing devices. The AirPods Pro 2 are available in South Africa for R5 499.

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“The hearing aid functionality is groundbreaking in that it doesn’t just measure health but also provides an intervention. There’s significant anticipation to see how this feature will be rolled out in various countries, especially since, at the moment, only the US has a formal over-the-counter hearing aid category,” said Swanepoel. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media