Quirky wants to usher in the next generation of headphones in its latest product development contest.
In collaboration with Harman, Quirky today announces a product challenge called Headphones of Tomorrow. The competition invites people from all over the world to submit headphone product ideas for development by Harman. Inventors with winning pitches will get recognition on the product’s packaging and have an opportunity to share a slice of revenues garnered from their design.
Quirky’s community has already brought to market a couple of audio products, such as the Ohm phone dock and wireless speaker Beat Booster. But the company says this new initiative will give its inventors the opportunity to create products at a larger scale — quite like its partnership with General Electric has.
Quirky first partnered with GE in 2013 to conjure up a host of Internet connected home appliances through Quirky’s community of inventors. Since then it’s rolled out a series of Wi-Fi connected devices including smart lights bulbs and power strips. The relationship with GE also spurred the break out of Wink, a Quirky subsidiary focused on building appliances for the connected home.
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The new partnership with Harman could be yet another vehicle for growing Quirky’s smart home device arsenal. Though it’s not an obvious addition to the connected home, there are certainly applications that fit this use — like a pair of headphones that sync up with your home audio system so that you can keep listening to the same track from one device to another or headphones that alert you when the front door to your house opens.
Whatever the ideas that come forth, it seems likely the company will be keeping an eye out for headphone ideas that have a connected home edge.
