Strategy in TECH...
Rumors abound for the last few days and now we learn it’s true, Frank Sterns, former Vice President of AV Specialty/Custom Integration for Sony, has left that position to join Sound United as Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations – Americas. This new role will begin on January 6, 2020.
You knew they were big, but you didn’t know just how big streaming innovator (and leader) Netflix really was…until now. In a bid to prove to investors they have what it takes to stave off a whole new class of streaming competitors, Netflix released some detailed numbers on their global subscription base that has Wall Street really buzzing.
The Census Bureau, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, released new home construction data for November, offering details on what is generally known as housing starts. The overall construction starts – which includes both single-family and multi-family homes – both showed increases over the revised numbers for October, suggesting a return to economic stability after a period of concern about a possible slowdown.
Emerald Expositions Events, Inc. (Emerald) (NYSE:EEX), parent company to the CEDIA Expo show and industry trade magazines CE Pro & Commercial Integrator, announced this week that CEO Sally Shankland will be leaving the company by the end of this year. Shankland was appointed CEO just this past June 2019, and has said she will step down “for personal health reasons.” Once again, the organization is plunged into a leadership vacuum which began just one year ago with the sudden resignation of then-CEO David Loechner.
As many integrators seek to pitch their clients on the many wonders of converting their dumb homes into “smart” homes, there are growing indicators that the promise of the smart home is not being reliably delivered up to this point…and may never be, according to one respected industry expert. And there is a growing chorus of others who appear to agree – possibly including Google, who is trying to manage expectations by relabelling the smart home as the “helpful home.”
In a letter to the media early Tuesday evening, Richard Stoerger announced the likely impending closure of Audio Design Associates (ADA), a company that was a founding member of CEDIA and a significant driving force in the early days of the “CEDIA channel.” The letter itself never explicitly explains the reasons for the possible closure, only offering vague allusions to: difficulty to “defeat the noise generated on a public level”… and … that they “just ran out of time and money”… and … a failure to “reckon with” how “difficult and expensive” it is to tell one’s story.
Early last week, a holiday week, sources reached out to relay the news that multiple manufacturer sales representatives were being terminated by James Loudspeaker. Happy Thanksgiving…you’re fired. In chats, I heard of the pain that some those reps felt – for while getting terminated is never a happy circumstance, getting terminated during holidays seems particularly poignant.
The Conference Board, in conjunction with Nielsen, announced on Tuesday that consumer confidence, a widely watched economic indicator, fell in November for the fourth straight month in-a-row. Consumers, it seems, are concerned about the current business climate and employment outlook. Even so, the level remains historically high and should not provide too much of a damper on current holiday spending by consumers.
In new data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the readings appear split with housing starts showing increases while new home sales declined. Housing, a prime component of the overall U.S. GDP has been in a bit of a swell over the last couple of months, driven largely by low interest rates stimulating demand for homes.
Sonos announced this week that it has acquired French AI voice control software maker Snips in a deal valued at $37.5 million. The company also released their Fiscal 2019 results in a letter to investors denoting a record year for the company – its first as a publicly traded one.
