American online retail giant, Amazon.com, Inc., is reportedly developing headphones that turn off/mute themselves when someone says your name, or in an emergency. Earlier this month, on the 19/07/2016, the corporation was granted a patent for noise-cancelling headphones that automatically turn off when exposed to certain sounds.
In recent years, noise-cancelling headphones have flooded the market, offering commuters an escape from every day, unpleasant street noises. However, this presents a safety risk. The innovative headphones that Amazon is developing could potentially prevent incidents and save lives.
Analysts predict that that this piece of tech won’t be on sale until at least a few years, if it is ever made.
According to an article recently published on CNET, one of the inventors (listed on the patent) has worked on related projects for Amazon. The article reads “I assume those could be used to listen to ambient sounds, similar to the way the Amazon Echo’s Alexa is always aware of vocal prompts spoken around her. The description even talks about training the microphones to listen for a two-part audio command like “Hey Justin!” That would make sense, given the inventors listed on the patent are two Amazon software engineers. One of them, Benjamin Scott, worked for three years on the Alexa Information team, according to his LinkedIn profile.”
Amazon.com, Inc. is active in a range of different industries. The company owns several fashion labels, and also has a cloud computing arm. The company’s recent success, and rapid profit growth, and thus, share price increase, has made CEO Jeff Bezos the 3rd richest man in the world, surpassing Warren Buffett. In the past year or so, the firm experienced profit growth of almost 1,000%.
As the NASDAQ closed on the 29/07/2016, a share in Amazon.com, Inc. was trading at $758.81, up by 0.82% on the day. Amazon currently boasts a marker cap of $365.77 billion, making it one of the largest retailers in the world.
