Strategy in TECH...
In yet another sign of a slowing economy, April residential housing construction starts declined for the second straight month in a row. At the same time, the Housing Market Index, a key gauge of homebuilder confidence, collapsed in May.
At the end of last week, Snap One Holdings Corp. released the results of their fiscal 2022 first quarter, a period which ended April 1, 2022, with comparisons to the same quarter last year, which ended on March 26, 2021. The company showed good revenue growth in the quarter but is still dealing with a net loss – albeit less of one than in 2021.
On Monday, I received a note from Premium Audio Company regarding my post on the bankruptcy of Onkyo Home Entertainment Co. Ltd. In this note, the company sought to get the message across that the Onkyo bankruptcy has nothing to do with them and that the Onkyo brand lives on under the guidance of its new owner, Premium Audio Company, a subsidiary of VOXX International.
Today in Osaka District Court in Osaka, Japan, Onkyo Home Entertainment Co. Ltd. (formerly Onkyo Corp.) filed for bankruptcy ending a long and storied history of innovative audio products. The action was taken less than a month after the company declared bankruptcy for two of its major subsidiaries in April. Now, the parent company has fallen as well…
Sonos reported on Wednesday that they had a strong second quarter fiscal 2022 result with good revenue growth. In the case of revenues, the company notes that they continue to track toward its annual revenue guidance of $1.95 billion – to – $2.0 billion. However, the company admitted that its profit margin took a hit as supply chain issues continue to bedevil it (and the rest of the industry) as well. They cut their forecast for profits in 2022.
More and more evidence continues to emerge suggesting that the economy is undergoing a fundamental shift, a turn if you will, that will at least slow economic growth – and may lead to recession. Perhaps the clearest indicator of that is the turn taken by tech, which has lost a trillion dollars in value in just three days of trading on the stock market. For the last two-plus years, tech was the driving force behind a dramatic economic expansion during the pandemic. What is happening now?
Emerald Holding Inc., the parent company of Emerald Expositions, a division that owns the CEDIA Expo trade show and CEPro media, announced its results for the first quarter of its fiscal 2022 year today – and these results clearly showed a strong rebound from the last two COVID-19 impacted years. With both revenues and earnings showing substantial increases, Emerald’s President and CEO Hervé Sedkey stated that “…we are in the midst of a robust recovery.”
Savant offered industry media a presentation revealing their vision of the deep integration of energy sources (and uses) into a fully-fledged, well-thought-out, total smart home system. To drive the industry towards this future, Savant’s vision is expansive, intelligent, and in my mind, pretty exciting. It starts with a foundation of power and how to make it smarter.
Below, you’ll find some of the key highlights of Savant’s plans for smart energy.
AudioControl, a specialty electronics manufacturer of innovative residential, commercial, and mobile audio products, revealed today that it has upgraded the semiconductor technology resident in its recently introduced 70-volt, dual-mode CM line of amplifiers. This upgrade, to Gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors, offers many performance improvements over traditional silicon-based ICs and is said to take the performance of this category to a whole new level.
In the summer of 2019, just months before the onset of COVID-19, Crestron Electronics, Inc. (Crestron) invited me to tour several of their facilities, including the lab at the heart of almost everything they do…the Research Center. It was beyond impressive, and I’ve been in some really impressive labs in my career. At the time, I said it was “like Disneyland for geeks.” That includes geeks like me!
Now, in honor of the company’s founder, Crestron has renamed the facility the George Feldstein Technology Center. This is a fitting tribute to the man who spent his days there constantly tinkering with new products, product concepts, and technology.
