Strategy in TECH...
Late in the day on Tuesday, Sonos held an investor event – their first such event – and kicked it off by announcing the new Roam portable speaker. While the $169 MSRP Roam speaker was interesting, I was more interested in trying to figure out the thinking behind why they wanted this small and relatively inexpensive portable as their next big thing.
Vizio Holding Corp. (Vizio) filed an S-1 registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering (IPO) of its stock on the public market. Their offering is being handled by J.P. Morgan and BoA, both of whom will act as lead book runners for the offering. The company hopes to use the symbol VZIO on the New York Stock Exchange.
But this isn’t their first try at going public.
On the first day of the virtual CES 2021 earlier this month, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) released their latest forecast for the total retail sales of technology in the United States. After a record year in 2020, the tech industry association says, collective retail sales are forecast to increase a robust 4.3% for a total of $461 billion in 2021.
We made it to the end of 2020! What a wild year it it has been. See my message for you during this unique holiday period following an incredibly challenging year for all of us.
In 2020, maybe now more so than ever before in our lives…it is an especially good time to pause and contemplate giving thanks at Thanksgiving. But…are you finding it hard to feel thankful about 2020?
Today, Savant Systems launched its latest remote control, the Pro Remote X2, which it says offers users “an unprecedented smart home experience from a hand-held remote.” Along with this, the company is simultaneously launching an aggressive new advertising campaign targeted at consumers and designed to drive business to Savant integrators.
A new day, a new year, a new DECADE – think of the possibilities! The last decade began in 2010 on the tail end of a major recession that affected all industries, but especially the housing industry – which was hit harder than most. This meant that, for those of us in the custom integration space, our opportunities were limited at that time, as housing is a significant driver of demand for the types of products custom integrators sell and install. However, the resulting long, slow economic recovery – which is still continuing – set new records and many would argue we enter the 2020s poised for even greater success.
Yesterday, I attended a memorial service even though I had no personal relationship with the person who had recently passed. In fact, I had never had the pleasure of even meeting this person. Yet I chose to pay my respects because I’ve known the family for years and am especially friendly with certain specific family members to whom I wanted to demonstrate the depth of my care and support. Out of respect for their privacy during this difficult time, I’ll not name them here – but I’d like to share some lessons I took away from such a poignant event.
Some would say a death at this time of year – during the holidays – is an especially tragic event…and there certainly was a lot of sadness shown there. Sadness is an unavoidable element of an event such as a memorial service. But there was also a lot of stories, laughter and most importantly…love.
Always one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving is one of the few times where it is socially acceptable to completely stuff your face with a big, delicious meal, and veg out on the sofa watching football all day long. What could be better than that??
PS Audio, a specialty manufacturer of affordable audiophilia, announced today that it is suspending sales of its products through local specialty retail stores and online retailers to focus on direct sales only. While the company has always sold products directly to end-users, it had a complementary channel of approximately 65 local specialty dealers, and a few online retailers supporting the brand as well.
