Strategy in TECH...
Power protection manufacturer SurgeX announced today that Jimmy Paschke, former Core Brands Director of CI, has joined the company as its new Southern Regional Sales Manager. The appointment is effective immediately.
Harman International Industries, Inc. announced today that is has acquired St. Louis-based Yurbuds, LLC., a manufacturer of headphones. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition seems surprising, given the fact that Harman already owns brands such as JBL and AKG that already offer headphones.
Just one day after we reported on layoffs at Velodyne’s audio division, we received word from the company that it is authorizing the Powerhouse Alliance, a national group of distributors, for its line of subwoofers. The agreement will make Velodyne subwoofers available to Powerhouse Alliances’ nationwide network of retailers and installers.
Multiple sources are reporting that Velodyne Acoustics, Inc. – a once high-flying specialty subwoofer manufacturer – has had a significant layoff in its audio division last week as the company seeks to redeploy its resources full-scale behind its LIDAR business. The company, which is driven by its enigmatic founder, David Hall, is betting its future (betting the farm, some would say) on its LIDAR technology which is used in self-driving vehicles (such as Google’s).
Screen Research, a line of high-performance projection screens owned by the Adeo Group of Italy, announced that it has selected specialty products distributor Grace Motif, Inc. as its exclusive distributor for the U.S. custom installation market, effective this month. Grace Motif has been the Screen Research distributor for the commercial market since the beginning of this year, so this announcement represents a significant expansion of the relationship.
On Wednesday, Lenbrook America, the exclusive distributor of NAD in the U.S., held a press presentation in a suite at the upscale Andaz 5th Avenue Hotel in Manhattan. It was a cool but gray and curiously humid day…still able to create enhanced perspiration for those rushing to the event from assorted train/subway/bus stops. But those members of the press who chose to attend were well rewarded for their efforts, as NAD launched a significant update to their Masters Series line – an update designed to further target a new customer that the company calls “Audiophile 2.0.”
Yogi Berra once said, “It’s like Deja-Vu, all over again!” A report out of Japan tells of a hot new trend in Europe. Apparently, the latest trend in mobile phones…is consumers going retro. Seem counter-intuitive? It’s even a bit of a fashion statement…the story originates out of Paris, France!
Screen Innovations announced this week that it is launching new, larger sizes in its popular Black Diamond series of projection screens. The new larger screen size – in each of two aspect ratios – will now include: 120-inches (16:9)…and 150-inches (2.35:1).
For the last couple of years, there has been a running court battle between two of the titans of the remote control category: Universal Electronics, Inc. (UEI) and Universal Remote Control, Inc. (URC). Today, one of them, URC, announced victory in the first of two pending patent infringement lawsuits that was originally filed in 2012.
URC claimed a complete victory – but Strata-gee.com has received a statement from UEI who says, in effect, not so fast – this dispute is far from over.
The Financial Times reported this morning that Apple, Inc. will announce a new software solution for the connected home market at the Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco next week. The move follows a lot of activity in the connected home channel recently including: Control4 going public, Google acquiring Nest, Philips launching Hue (app controlled lighting), Belkin launching WeMo, Harman acquiring AMX…and now Apple seeking to bring it all together in the home.
