Strategy in TECH...
A newly created poll by Axios and The Harris Poll reveals what Americans think of the reputation of the top 100 most visible companies in the U.S. Tech, as you might imagine, was well represented here, and this poll bared a difficult truth for many tech companies…their reputation is crashing.
Thanks to some heads-up reporting by The Verge, we learn that Sonos will announce an upgraded version of their Sonos One speaker system. According to the report, the upgrades are all internal and the new version will, somewhat confusingly, look exactly like the original one.
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development shows that sales of new single-family homes in December were a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 621,000 or 3.7% above the revised rate in November of 599,000. However, it remained 2.4% below the year-ago rate of sales in December 2017 of 636,000.
At the urging the industry minister of Japan, the country’s Fair Trade Commission will look at a new program announced by Amazon Japan that some suggest may be anti-competitive in nature. Depending on the Commission’s findings, Amazon may be forced to abandon the idea, which is a form of a consumer rebate program.
The Park West Group, a CI industry-specific executive search firm, announced earlier this month that it is expanding, adding Mary Demple to its team. The company says this expansion is being made to address the continuing growth of its business.
Imagine this, you leave work early to grab a quick bite of lunch and get home before your sister, niece, and nephew arrive for a family visit. At lunch, you get a notification from your Ring Doorbell app and see that they’ve arrived early. No problem, thanks to Ring, you can let them in and head out to meet them there.
But is it really your family? Or is it a hacker who has figured out how to hack your Ring Doorbell and is now in your home, emptying it of all of its valuables?
The U.S. Commerce Department released new data this week on housing starts for December 2018. Overall residential construction dropped to 1.08 million units on a seasonally adjusted annual rate or 11.2% lower than the November rate of 1.2 million units. This is the lowest rate of residential construction since September 2016.
A new survey by a business economics organization reveals that nearly 8 out of 10 economists (77%) say there will be a recession in the U.S. by 2021. A majority or 52% of them suggest that a recession will take place by the end of 2020. Yet even so, a majority of these economists anticipate that the Federal Reserve Board will continue to raise interest rates yet this year.
We learned today that Bowers and Wilkins (B&W) is close to launching a new series of products that appear to be under the “Formation” brand or series name. This news broke when MacRumors, a fan blog for aficionados of Apples McIntosh products, noticed a listing on Apple’s online list of sanctioned HomeKit and AirPlay accessories. They dug deeper…
Eyebrows raised everywhere when privacy-concerned industry watchers discovered that Google had put a microphone in their Nest Secure home alarm system, but failed to disclose that fact. Google says is was simply an “error.” But was it?
