Strategy in TECH...
Thiel Audio, in a series of press releases on their website, announced multiple new products to be launched at this week’s CES in Las Vegas. Some of these new products are being launched under the Thiel brand name, while others are being offered under the Aurora brand – a brand that was originally created for a 4K music venue at the company’s headquarters in Nashville, TN.
This launch represents what the company hopes will be the next chapter in the troubled brand’s long-running saga.
Korea’s ETNews network is reporting this week that, after weeks of negotiation, LG Display and Sony have signed a comprehensive deal for the supply of OLED panels to be used in new Sony OLED TVs. The deal has been rumored for several weeks now, but ETNews has confirmed that a supply contract has been signed between the parties.
Calling 2016 “a year of transition,” NAPCO Media announced yesterday that it has printed its last Technology Integrator (TI) magazine – deciding to withdraw from print media and reinvent itself into an online-only property. The move has been rumored for weeks, and in an online post yesterday attributed to the “TI Staff”, the company made the news official.
In new research from Flurry Analytics, Apple clearly won the battle for holiday shoppers smartphone dollars. Based on activations of smartphones and tablets during the period of 12/19-12/25, Apple took a healthy 44% bite out of the market…well ahead of second place finisher Samsung (21%), who has struggled in the wake of a battery-blowup scandal. But when compared to last year…some surprises emerge.
GoldenEar Technology announced this week that it has expanded its sales team with the addition of Christopher Volk. Volk, said to be a longtime A/V veteran, will take the position of Eastern Region Director of Sales for GoldenEar, effective immediately.
Toshiba Corps. stock price plunged 30% this week as the company announced it is facing the prospect of booking a potentially multi-billion dollar writedown related to an acquisition made by its U.S. unit, Westinghouse Electric. The acquisition was related to the construction of two nuclear power plant projects being built in the U.S. as the company made a big bet on a nuclear renaissance in the U.S. power structure – a bet that is not paying off.
Kramer Electronics, a maker of hardware-centric control solutions for the commercial audio/visual market, has acquired Detroit, MI-based iRule, a fast rising provider of software-based home control and automation solutions – including their OnControls residential line – in a private transaction that closed last Friday, December 23rd. The terms of the deal, including valuation, were not disclosed, but iRule co-founder and CEO Itai Ben-Gal told us this deal was the logical conclusion to a now multi-year relationship between the companies.
We’ve been reporting lately on the growing popularity of voice control. Driven largely by the introduction of Amazon’s Echo in 2014, which featured a dramatic improvement in performance over previous hands free systems like Siri, voice control has been picking up momentum with consumers and attracting new competitors like Google with its Home model, and soon Microsoft with Cortana.
But news services are reporting that Amazon has sold out of the Echo right in the heart of the holidays. Not good…
