Strategy in TECH...
When it comes to sophisticated AV system installations, integrators have been forced to choose from a panoply of incompatible, proprietary matrix systems from a group of control manufacturers. These systems are complex and require specific programming protocols unique to them.
Then, at this year’s ISE, everything changed…
In November 2016, we learned that Samsung had acquired Harman International Industries in a deal valued at $8 billion. At that time, everyone pretty much assumed the deal was all about automotive audio – and area that inside-Samsung sources had identified as a market the company sought to penetrate. Now we learn that it wasn’t just about cars.
Bloomberg is reporting that Chinese mega brand LeEco missed its normal payroll at the end of March, telling employees it would pay them a few days later. While this is a situation that is not unfamiliar to many small business owners, LeEco is anything but your typical small business owner. They are supposedly in the final stages of a $2 billion acquisition of major TV brand Vizio.
But if LeEco can’t make their own payroll…how can they still buy Vizio?
In reports out of Taiwan, sources say that Apple, Inc. has ordered 70 million bendable OLED panels from Samsung Electronics. An order of this size can only be for the upcoming iPhone 8, expected to be launched in late 2017. The order also suggests that Apple is expecting the iPhone 8 to be a big success.
Emotiva Audio Corp. announced this week that it has appointed Walter Schofield, formerly of SVS Sound, as its first-ever VP, Global Strategy. Schofield has along career in audio but only recently joined the online world at SVS. The position was newly created at Emotiva.
We have confirmed that Peter Tribeman, one of the founding partners and long time President of Atlantic Technology International, will leave the company at the end of this month. It is the end of a 28-year career there and, as we’ve learned, has been in the works for about eighteen months.
Although many analysts criticize slowing innovation at industry powerhouse Apple, Inc., final results for global smartphone shipments shows Apple with four of the top five models. Not bad for a technology slacker!
Network systems provider Access Networks announced this week that it has hired Roy Beiser, a former Intel executive, as its first ever Director of IT. But even more than that, Beiser, who is said to be highly credentialed in network technologies and cyber security issues, will assist in helping Access Networks to establish “the highest IT and cyber security standards for the company’s base of integration professionals and their clients.”
Delaware District Judge Richard G. Andrews has delivered a decision that is sure to be a blow against D&M Holdings’ defense in its now long-running patent infringement dispute with Sonos, originally filed in October 2014. Judge Andrews has denied a motion by D&M to invalidate four key Sonos patents at the heart of their dispute and a key part of Sonos’ claim that D&M’s HEOS products infringe upon these and other patents.
Middle Atlantic Products announced today that CEDIA selected it as part of a group of industry products for a unique theater project at the Portland International Airport. A joint effort by Hollywood Theater, a nonprofit group in Portland, CEDIA, the integration industry’s leading trade association, and Portland’s PDX Art program (Portland International Airports designation is PDX), this unique art project opened in late February.
