Strategy in TECH...
This week, National Public Radio (NPR) tells the story of the Minneapolis Speaker Company, Inc., known as MISCO, a St. Paul, MN-based manufacturer of speaker drivers and systems sold mostly on an OEM basis, who is struggling to continue to manufacture products here in the U.S. as they have for the last 70 years. What threatens their ability to continue to do so? In a word…tariffs.
The Conference Board, in conjunction with Nielsen, announced on Tuesday that consumer confidence, a widely watched economic indicator, fell in November for the fourth straight month in-a-row. Consumers, it seems, are concerned about the current business climate and employment outlook. Even so, the level remains historically high and should not provide too much of a damper on current holiday spending by consumers.
In new data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the readings appear split with housing starts showing increases while new home sales declined. Housing, a prime component of the overall U.S. GDP has been in a bit of a swell over the last couple of months, driven largely by low interest rates stimulating demand for homes.
Tech Data, one of the largest technology distributors in the U.S. and globally, has been acquired by Apollo Global Management, a private equity powerhouse, in a deal valued at $5.4 billion. The deal announced today, is expected to close by mid-2020.
As the economy continues to show more signs of a slowdown, we can’t help but notice increasing volatility in the month-to-month readings of various statistics. The latest government data on housing construction starts is a great example of this. After a big jump in August, starts dropped in September by 9.4% – a larger than normal amount – from the revised rate in August.
In a new report by the U.S. Commerce Department released Wednesday, U.S. retail sales in September have broadly dropped for the first time in seven months. The report is seen by many economists as another significant sign of a cooling economy.
Much like any trade show, CEDIA Expo 2019 was full of optimism and good cheer. But with just a few questions to top executives of major exhibitors it is fairly easy to pierce that veil of good cheer to reveal underlying concerns of approaching economic storm clouds. I chatted with Frank Sterns, Sony’s Vice President of AV Specialty/Custom Integration, about the turbulent waters our industry is sailing through and how Sony is faring in the face of these increasing headwinds.
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) is pulling no punches when it comes to the latest revised tariff schedule being implemented by the Trump administration. The recently revised tariff schedule, which started a new round of tariffs just days ago on September 1st, with a second round scheduled to hit on December 15th means pain and uncertainty moving forward according to the CTA.
In the choppy waters of today’s current economy, we continue to get mixed signals – this time from the housing market. Last week, we learned that residential construction starts declined in June by 0.9% below the rate in May. This week, we find that sales of newly built homes in June increased by 7% as compared to sales in May.
With most economists on pins and needles over the recent number of economic data points that seem to suggest an impending economic slowdown, word came at the end of the last week that the latest jobs report from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics saw employment take a big jump. According to this latest data, employers added a significant 224,000 jobs in June, a big increase from May’s anemic results.
