Mainland China's Ocvaco technology offers model P1270203, a phone headset that features a Ø32mm Mylar speaker driver unit, 32ohm impedance, 20mW maximum input power and 20Hz to 20kHz frequency response.

Call center and VoIP markets further feeding growth; wireless models to wait a couple more years

Despite the inroads made by wireless technologies in many telecom products and industries, the wired phone headset manufacturing industry in mainland China and Hong Kong continues to be dominated by wired models. The majority of makers, particularly in mainland China, concentrate on developing and making wired phone headsets, and have no plans to invest heavily in wireless models. Suppliers agree that demand for wireless phone headsets remains small and some technical issues need to be resolved before the market can fully take off.

Audio quality remains a priority among makers. Toward this end, companies are improving speaker and microphone quality, as well as building in noise cancellation. With more models being designed for VoIP and call center applications, makers are keen to improve their products' performance.

Hong Kong makers said that phone headsets make up a niche market that is best served with a full product range. At present, the lower tiers of the phone headset market, which include retail, are made up of headsets for desktop phones. These may also include headsets that double as USB phones. Some companies focus on products for the consumer audio market and offer only a few phone headset models.

Despite the decline in sales for headsets for home phones worldwide, makers are optimistic about growth this year and beyond. This growth will be fueled by the growing adoption of VoIP applications and the booming call center industry. Even makers in South Korea are piggybacking on the call center market to boost growth in this line. Many companies in the region likewise see Bluetooth as adding to the growth momentum, and are thus speeding up R&D work on wireless products.

South Korea currently has a nascent supplier base for phone headsets. Most of the companies engaged in headset production concentrate on developing headsets for mobile phones and other devices such as Bluetooth dongles.

Phone headsets from mainland China are currently priced at $1 to $2 each. High-end models are quoted from $8 to $10. Despite the increase in the cost of raw materials and the inflation of the renminbi, many makers kept stable product prices in 2006 due to competition and production capacity surplus. However, as profit margins continue to slide and the value of the renminbi rises, makers expect prices to climb.

	The MHP-340 from mainland China's Kensing features a steel band, 27mm driver, 300Hz to 20kHz frequency response and 16ohm impedance.

Mainland China has about 100 phone headset makers, 90 percent of which are based in Guangdong province. These makers produced about 50 million phone headsets in 2006. Exports accounted for more than 90 percent of the total output.

The majority of makers are increasing their production capacity in 2007. Ocvaco Technology Co. Ltd, for instance, will be moving to its newly built industrial park, which is expected to increase its production capacity by about 400 percent. The company is a subsidiary company of Hong Kongbased Ocvaco Group.

Ocvaco Technology specializes in the R&D, manufacture and marketing of audio products such as speakers, receivers, earphones and headsets. Ocvaco Technology began producing phone headsets in 1997. It is capable of producing 1.2 million phone headsets a month, against an actual output of about 450,000 units monthly.

The company obtained RoHS approval as early as 2004. Kensing Technology Co. Ltd began production of phone headsets upon its establishment in 1996. The company also offers headsets for mobile phones and PCs, inner-ear earphones, two-way radio earphones, FM transmitters and portable speakers. It produces 300,000 phone headsets a month, against a monthly capacity of 500,000 units.

Minami Acoustics Ltd specializes in R&D, manufacture and sales of earphones. It complies with BVQI, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. It has a monthly production capacity of about 200,000 units. The actual monthly output is 100,000 units. Minami and Kensing secured RoHS approval in mid-2006.

	TheTB610 from Hong Kong's Accutone is a binaural headset designed for extended wear in call center setups.

The phone headset industry in Hong Kong largely depends on telcos and manufacturers or distributors of telecom equipment. Only a few makers are active in the line.

Several large manufacturers of audio entertainment headphones carry one or two phone headset models in their product lines. Some companies specialize in the OEM and ODM retail business.

Accutone Technologies Ltd caters mostly to phone equipment manufacturers and telcos in Europe, although it has distributors worldwide.

The company also supplies its products to call centers. It has more clients from developing countries, where the booming call center industry has stimulated strong demand for headsets. Developed countries such as the United States outsource call center services to developing countries such as India and the Philippines.

Seeing the products' market potential in relation to the VoIP sector, Accutone has expanded its products to include VoIP and USB phone headsets. It has been experiencing growth since H2 2006, and expects that this will continue throughout 2007.

The company believes growth will be supported by demand for lower-cost alternatives to regular phone headsets from Plantronics and Jabra. To complement its comprehensive product line, Accutone offers aftersales support and product warranty. Innovation Technology Co. Ltd, which has been focusing on the consumer audio market, offers a few phone headset models. These phone headsets are targeted mostly at call centers, although some units go to the retail market for use with corded phones.

A/V headphone maker Globe Audio Products Mfy Ltd works with telecom operators for some of its phone headsets.

Mainland China makers offer wired phone headsets with Ø32mm to Ø48mm speaker driver unit, 32ohm to 30ohm impedance, 20mW input power and 15Hz to 30kHz frequency response. The headsets are also equipped with microphones with 1kHz to 3kHz sensitivity and 100Hz to 16kHz frequency response. Makers said that compared with MP3/MP4 player and mobile phone headsets, phone headsets have lower requirements for voice effects.

Some makers forecast wireless phone headsets, particularly Bluetooth, will start gaining ground in the near term. Rising demand from call centers could speed up this development.

Hong Kong's Accutone already offers a few 2.4GHz wireless phone headsets. However, as demand for wireless models remains small and technology issues abound, even a number of Hong Kong makers said that wireless will take more years before it can start influencing the phone headset line. Wireless headsets are prone to terminating calls when their batteries run low during prolonged use.

Some mainland China makers are not keen on adopting new technologies such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and VoIP for their products. With unstable market demand and high operation requirement, many makers do not have immediate plans to develop wireless models.

Due to the lower technology threshold for this line, makers in mainland China spend only 3 percent to 4 percent of their total sales on R&D. The R&D teams are usually involved in the PCB layout and cosmetic design stages.

Many companies are keen to improve their products' audio quality, especially in the light of VoIP applications.

Hong Kong's Accutone, for example, features better lowfrequency support in its VoIP phone headsets compared to traditional phone headsets. In some products, Accutone uses receiver modules in place of raw speakers. These receiver modules have built-in speaker units. They reproduce the human voice signal with better clarity than raw speakers.

The company's VoIP headsets feature 32ohm speaker impedance, making them more attuned to the sampling rate in VoIP compared to traditional phone headsets with 150ohm speaker impedance, hi-fi and wideband reception. The company said that traditional headsets deliver flatter sound, as everything except voice is filtered from the signal.

Accutone has more than 10 phone headset models, plus related products and accessories such as phone amplifiers and phone headset adapters.

All of Accutone's phone headsets are designed in-house. They come in over-the-head, over-the-ear and behind-the-neck models. A few of the over-the-head models can be converted to over-the-ear units.
Accutone's phone headsets have comfortable speaker padding such as leatherette for extended wear. This is to enable the headsets to be used in professional applications such as call centers and operators, where headsets are worn for hours on end.

Globe Audio, which offers wired phone headsets, has both monoaural and binaural models. It caters to both operators and retailers, and for the latter offers headphone versions of USB phones for use with Skype.

In operator setups, Accutone said that the choice between monaural and binaural phone headsets often depends on the worker density.

Binaural headsets are more suited to applications with high caller traffic. Because of this, the company said that most of its clients from developed markets prefer monaural headsets, and customers in developing countries opt for binaural headsets.

Like audio entertainment headsets, phone headsets also apply noise-cancellation technology but for the microphones instead of the speakers. Consumer headphone and microphone sets use omnidirectional microphones. Phone headsets often use noisecancelling microphones to ensure that only voice is picked up.

The specifications for the speaker and microphone units differ among models depending on the target applications. Hong Kong's Accutone uses electric condenser microphones (ECMs) in all its products. It has internal and external design applications for ECMs.

An internal type ECM is a voice tube with an aluminum casing for less noise. These voice tube microphones are mostly omnidirectional and cannot be voice-only. External ECMs may include boom microphones, which like tube microphones are omnidirectional, and bidirectional microphones, also known as noise-cancellation microphones.

Innovation Technology produces only monoaural phone headsets in over-the-ear or over-the head designs. These products feature the company's self-produced 28mm 150ohm speakers and 9.7x6.7mm omnidirectional boom microphones. The models are designed with frequency response of 100Hz to 5kHz for voice.

According to Innovation Technology, most of its customers ask for in-line control but only for the power and mute buttons. In Accutone's case, in-line controls are not usually included in the phone headsets, but are also found on the phone amplifier or the phone equipment.

Accutone reveals that call centers typically require phone headsets with noise cancellation.

The company said that U.S. call centers also specify a sound level requirement (SLR) that details a particular dB range and acoustic shock protection (ASP). These specifications are the result of a wave of insurance suits for U.S. call centers where employees claimed injury from prolonged headset use.

Accutone provides Nortel or Avaya connector alignments. It also offers adapters that switch between connectors.

Makers from mainland China and Hong Kong ship their products overseas. The majority of companies cater to OEM and ODM buyers, and the rest distribute their products under their in-house labels. The major export destinations are North America, Europe and Japan.

About 90 percent of mainland China's phone headset output goes to the overseas market. Currently, about 80 percent of Ocvaco Technology's products are for export. It ships its products to markets in Japan, South Korea and Europe.

Minami exports all its products to Japan and countries in Europe. Its customers include Philips, Motorola, GN Resound, Namtai, Lenovo and Amoi.

Kensing mainly caters to the domestic market, with only 25 percent of its output shipped to Europe and the Americas.

Hong Kong's Accutone mainly markets its own brand, but also caters to OEM and ODM customers in Europe. Accutone produces about 15,000 phone headsets in a month.

Up to 60 percent of Globe Audio's sales come from OEM and ODM clients in Europe and the United States. Phone headsets account for about 10 percent of the company's sales. It currently offers USB phone headsets for the retail market. It targets a 30 percen-on-year increase in its USB phone headset production in 2007.

Most of Innovation Technology's phone headsets are for clients in Europe and the United States, although it also maintains long-term clients from Japan.

The thriving call center industry worldwide and the entry of Bluetooth into the line are feeding the growth of south Korea's phone headset market. Bluetooth models will lead the trends in the regions' phone headset line this year.

Makers from South Korea will also be focusing their R&d on enhancing the frequency response, voice quality and coverage range for wireless headsets.

Dasan Electron Co. Ltd said that Bluetooth's inroads into the PstN phone headset line have bolstered the company's sales revenue. the company offers monoaural and binaural headsets, including 2.4GHz dsst headsets, Bluetooth headsets, and headsets for cordless and mobile phones. the company has introduced a model that features two different headsets with one line. the model is designed for call center applications.

Dasan Electron is developing wireless headsets that will support 8hr call time, over 40 channels and 50m operating distance. It will be using binary CdMa technology to develop the product.

NPI Co. Ltd has developed Bluetooth headsets for a public service office. aside from call centers, the company caters to niche markets. about 80 percent of the company's headset output is sold in the domestic market. the company is currently in talks with clients in mainland China, and targets Japan as its next market.

Dasan Electron said that each country has different needs and requirements for headsets. Markets in south Korea and europe prefer monoaural types that are compact and light. Buyers in the United states, on the other hand, prefer binaural types. the United states absorbs 40 percent of dasan electron's output. europe follows with 30 percent, and australia with 20 percent share.

With the current exchange rate in south Korea, makers are not keen on decreasing the prices of their phone headsets. to boost their sales, some makers plan to release high-end products such as Bluetooth headsets. dasan electron will keep the prices of its headsets stable.