Strategy in TECH...
The media in Japan is reporting that Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., a Taiwanese manufacturer mostly known for its Foxconn OEM division that is Apple Inc.’s largest supplier, has made a $2.5 billion offer acquire Sharp Corp., Japan’s troubled LCD display manufacturer. But Hon Hai’s offer has one very special condition of sale that won’t be popular in Sharp’s Osaka headquarters…
Toshiba, who is on the verge of announcing a record loss and plans another round of layoffs, is far from the only Japanese giant who is stumbling. A new analysis by the Nikkei suggests it’s possible that Sharp Corp. may not have enough cash to survive the winter – despite the fact that multiple potential suitors are swirling around them in a head-spinning series of negotiations that, so far, are unproductive. And the news of these new troubles have surfaced after they successfully concluded negotiations for a ¥200 billion bank bailout in April.
Thiel Audio unexpectedly announced late today that it would show and demonstrate a new product – a powered subwoofer – at next month’s CES show in Las Vegas, Nevada. This new subwoofer, called the SmartSub™ 1.12, is the first new product introduced by Thiel in a year and appears to contain several new technologies for the company including Wi-Fi integration, app control, advanced signal processing and more.
A new board of directors has been selected by the Home Technology Specialists of America (HTSA), one of the leading retail buying groups in the U.S. This new board, along with the recently announced new managing director (Jon Robbins), represents an all-new and fresh approach to group management and oversight – albeit from a selection of executives with tremendous history within the organization.
In a result that exceeded economists’ estimates, November overall housing starts jumped an impressive 10.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.173 million units. Well over the revised October rate of 1.062 million units, it also exceeded the 1.007 million units in November last year by 16.5%.
More importantly for our industry, single-family home construction rates jumped as well.
Strata-gee.com editor Ted Green made a guest appearance on AVWeek’s new webcast called AVWeek Special: Residential. Just the second episode of this all-new, residential industry-centric webcast, host Tim Albright led an industry panel that, in addition to Green, included Heather Sidorowicz, Steven Brawner, and Todd Anthony Puma commenting on several hot stories of the day.
Probably the biggest news in business today is that the Federal Reserve Board hiked interest rates for the first time in almost a decade. Wall Street celebrated by driving up stock values in the wake of the news. Yet consumer specialists and others are sounding the alarm. So is the Fed’s rate increase good news or bad news?
Emotiva Audio Corporation is one of those ideas whose core elements initially seemed incongruous – high-end products…sold on the Internet? When we learned of their launch 12-years ago, we predicted doom and damnation. After all, high-end audio, we posited, was as much about the experience -the audition – as it is about the product. Founder Dan Laufman proved us wrong. This week, Laufman caught our attention again when we recently received information about an impressive roster of new models to be launched at CES.
We reported to you last month that, in an unexpected development best described as surprising, two members of CEDIA’s Board of Directors – Bob Brown and Richard Millson – abruptly resigned their positions within 24-hours of each other. We learned of this through our industry sources, not from CEDIA – which has yet to make any official statement about this unusual event. While we were able to confirm the incident had happened, since none of the parties would speak to us about it, we were unable to report on the reasons behind why this double resignation occurred in the first place. Now…we have more information.
