Strategy in TECH...
VOXX International Corporation (NASDAQ:VOXX) revealed this week that they were the victim of a ransomware attack in July and that an assessment of the hack completed early this month shows that sensitive and confidential employee and contractor information has been compromised. The company has issued a warning to all employees and contractors who have worked for the company over the last 20-years.
As previously reported by Strata-gee, the Crestron NEXT event of two weeks ago was a remarkable accomplishment for one company to pull off. With a full two-day agenda – Crestron NEXT offered lots of great content, such as its perspective on the tech business today, seminars on their key current tech products, and more importantly, advice on where things are going tomorrow.
Probably one of my favorite presentations was actually the closing presentation – where Ranjan Singh, Crestron’s Executive VP of Product and Technology summed up the key points of the last two days…and more importantly…offered some details on trends to watch today that will drive the future in a presentation titled “Future Innovations, Next & Beyond.” This is the kind of smart insight that most integrators never get to hear.
No question about it, Savant is on a roll. Just four months ago in May, the company surprised the industry by announcing their acquisition of GE Lighting, instantly transforming the company into one of the top lighting providers in the US. But, clearly, they weren’t done yet, as the company announced two new partnerships at CEDIA Expo Virtual – one with Robern, a luxury bathroom furnishings manufacturer…and the second with Devialet, a unique design-centric powered speaker maker out of Europe.
AudioControl, a specialty electronics manufacturer of residential, commercial, and mobile audio products, had several announcements at last week’s CEDIA Expo Virtual. While many of those were announcing, for example, the shipping availability of previously announced products, one announcement in particular caught my eye. And it’s not about a product at all!
In a press conference at CEDIA Expo Virtual last week, James Loudspeaker showed the gathered press a dramatic new expansion of their all terrain line of outdoor speaker products – new outdoor towers that just might move the earth beneath your feet. The company says that these new All Terrain Outdoor Towers “are designed to deliver concert-level performance outdoors.”
Event season is upon us, as evidenced by the two major events that took place last week – CEDIA Expo Virtual 2020 and Crestron NEXT. This year, thanks to COVID-19, these normally in-person events took place in the digital domain as virtual events. And the next big show that integrators are going to want to watch for – which will also be a virtual event – is the upcoming Snap Pro Live being produced by industry powerhouse SnapAV.
At the dawn of the custom integration industry (then custom installation industry), it became clear to many that there was strong consumer demand for a more custom solution that allowed clients to reclaim floor space lost to big box speakers. This demand led to the creation of in-ceiling and in-wall speakers. Certainly, for many consumers, this was a dramatic step forward in regaining control of their interior design. Yet as time went by, it was clear that what many clients really wanted was…completely invisible sound.
But invisible speakers generally don’t match the sound quality of traditional visible in-ceiling/in-wall models – a major performance compromise that causes many integrators to refuse to offer them. But in a press conference at the CEDIA Expo Virtual this week, Sonance told the gathered media that they have solved the conundrum of the sound quality compromise of invisible speaker performance.
CEDIA Expo Virtual was almost exclusively an online media event…rather than a real, in-person trade show. I know…duh! Yes, I knew this logically, but it hadn’t really hit me viscerally until I actually attended the event. But what that means for Emerald Exposition is that their expertise in fielding large scale, B2B, in-person events really doesn’t apply here. And that fact forced them to rely exclusively on CE Pro for almost the entire event, including content strategy, seminar production, and show performance.
Creston, one of the industry’s largest and most respected brands of control and automation solutions for the residential and commercial channels, is holding their Crestron NEXT virtual event next week – and it looks extremely interesting. Taking place over two days – September 15 & 16 (yes, during CEDIA’s virtual show), there are two versions: residential and commercial.
In a new and troubling sign that the economy is not yet out of the woods, government data showed that for the month of July, retail sales barely crept up 1.2% overall. But there was one bright spot in the government’s report – retail sales of electronics and appliances jumped an impressive 23%.
