February 2026

The Many Opportunities For Microphones
Microphone categories are evolving and innovating.
Editorial By J. Martins

  Have you noticed that voice interfaces and digital assistants are back, thanks to artificial intelligence? And that adaptive audio has gained a whole new meaning thanks to AI? What about transcription, summarization, translation, and other AI-powered features that now expand voice capture?

Voice applications are everywhere, from more widespread communication and conferencing options to voice assistants or simple voice commands expanding to even more product categories. Even automotive is seeing increasing adoption of applications that require the use of more sensors, including microphones for adaptive features and more active control of car acoustics and sound sources.

If you have to find a common technology denominator around these trends, it's easy to identify the preponderant role of microphones. None of those important trends—transversal from consumer to professional and even critical communications—can be realized without one or many microphones being involved.

Of course, we are talking predominantly about MEMS microphones for those applications, and that's a category that audioXpress has been following closely and that we have covered in multiple market updates and dedicated articles (including our "MEMS Microphones in the Age of AI," article, audioXpress, February 2026).

What we have seen in 2024 and 2025 is that there is a widespread effort to increase value to the MEMS microphones category by adding a system/module approach, and by merging the microphone with sensors, "smarts" (tying the microphone directly with dedicated processing), or even combining speaker and microphone in one (an idea with yet unproven merits).

In every case, all these strategies only make sense because those MEMS devices are being used in the front end of edge-processing and AI Voice applications. As signaled by the announcement that Syntiant, the Irvine, CA-based pioneer of low-power edge AI devices, had acquired Knowles' microphone and vibration sensors business in 2024. The plan is to combine MEMS microphones with the company's neural processors. Even Knowles had previously explored embedding signal processing with its microphones. Syntiant is already doing promising demonstrations of those efforts, confirming for the rest of the industry that the trend toward edge AI integration into microphones is accelerating. The trend is now generally recognized by players worldwide, and is motivating a series of strategic alliances between companies in all ends of the supply chain.

As the conversation around AI applications is intensifying, product developers can no longer envisage a new design without considering the implications of what's changed. The past two years alone have been historical moments, thanks to the enabling of AI in the audio product domain (based on trained models, machine learning, or neural networks). audioXpress also recently discussed the momentous transition taking place with AI in signal processing (see audioXpress, November 2025), and in this issue, it was tempting to explore further related trending areas. But there's so much more to talk about than just MEMS microphones and how AI is changing audio and voice front ends.

If there's an audio product segment that is extremely dynamic and exciting right now, it is microphones, and we could have easily filled all pages of this February 2026 issue just addressing the many interesting stories from dozens of companies active in different domains of the market studio, communications, streaming, field recording, modeling microphones, live performance, wireless transmission... All areas of focus for hundreds of companies, with hundreds of examples on how those microphone categories are evolving and innovating. And naturally, when there are strong market dynamics and growth, there are also acquisition opportunities, allowing companies to expand and diversify.

J. Martins
Editor-in-Chief

Subscribe To audioXpress Magazine
Click here to subscribe to audioXpress magazine.