Strategy in TECH...
We have now confirmed that at the end of the day last Friday, October 6th, the Classé headquarters facility was in fact closed by Bowers & Wilkins (B&W) for the last time and all remaining employees were dismissed. This move is a sad and sobering end to a once proud brand celebrated by many audiophiles as one of the finest performing lines of high-end electronics available.
One of the most iconic manufacturer sales representatives in the consumer electronics industry in the Mid-Atlantic territory, Steven B. Zaboji, was killed Saturday just before 2:00pm, when the Piper Pawnee aircraft he was piloting crashed shortly after releasing a glider it had towed into the sky. According to the Virginia State Police, the crash occurred near the Front Royal Airport, the airport it had taken off from, in Warren County, Virginia.
For the first time ever since the creation of the Technology & Business Summit in California some seven years ago, it comes to the Big Apple…and the big show made a big impression. Held over two days – Tuesday in Long Island; Thursday in Northern New Jersey – organizer Mark Cichowski tells us it was a huge success.
Japan Display Inc., a unique public/private partnership that was once Japan’s largest supplier of LCD panels but has been struggling of late, saw the price of shares of its stock jump as much as 24% Wednesday on news that it had developed a new lower cost manufacturing process for OLED panels. The company, which had been struggling with slackening global demand for LCD panels, will seek outside investment to pursue the opportunity provided by this new OLED manufacturing process.
After many months of rumors and promises, Sonos announced today the new Sonos One, their first wireless speaker with voice-control capabilities built-in – in other words, its first smart speaker. And we have to say, Sonos was pretty smart about how they approached the smart speaker market.
Multiple sources are telling us that on Friday, October 6th, the Montreal headquarters of Classé will close their doors for the last time and all remaining employees will be let go. This includes the dismissal of Classé President Dave Nauber, who has been with the company since 2002. Classé is part of the B&W Group, which itself is going through a major restructuring in the wake of the dismissal of President Doug Henderson as we reported to you back in July.
Emerald Expositions, the new owner of the CEDIA tradeshow, announced this week that the CEDIA 2017 show had a significant jump in attendance. According to the exposition company, attendance jumped almost 7% from 18,750 last year to “more than 20,000 home tech professionals” this year. This announcement, normally released on the last day of the show, was held for 11-days by Emerald, Strata-gee was told, so they could perform deep data analysis.
Unfortunately, they chose to share very, very little of that data in this announcement. But more is promised.
3rd Party Testing & Techs Can Earn Their Own Pakedge GearControl4 announced today a smart new training program that it hopes will create an army of Pakedge Certified Network Administrators (PCNA) throughout the custom integration industry. The company noted, correctly we think, that “Practical, hands-on training for networking has been lacking throughout the…custom install industry,” Control4 has designed an exceedingly clever learning program with a strong participation motivator – techs can earn Pakedge gear for their own systems.
It was only just a matter of months ago, in January 2017, that we learned that CEDIA had sold off their trademark show to Emerald Expositions, the biggest B-to-B tradeshow promoter in North America. This news came completely out of the blue, with no forewarning to members of the Association.
When the sale was announced by the Association, the very last line of their notice was: “The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.” This lack of disclosure makes it virtually impossible for any loyal supportive CEDIA member to evaluate this major decision – selling off the single largest revenue generator for the Association – by the group management.
What the Future Holds for the CEDIA Show“Do I need to ‘prepare’ for anything?” Emerald Expositions Marketing Manager Brianna Morris asked us in a firm tone as we met to set up a date for an interview. “Prepare?,” we asked. “Yes…we’re read your stuff,” she said in a deeper tone.
I could tell right then, it was going to be an interesting interview.
