Strategy in TECH...
AudioControl and Josh.ai announced last week that they were partnering with an integration that will allow integrators to offer their clients a better voice-enabled home entertainment control experience. A perfect blend of the high-quality electronics from AudioControl, coupled with the natural language and privacy protecting voice automation technology of Josh.ai, means clients can simply say their commands to their system and have their system respond in new powerful ways.
It appears that the other shoe is dropping in the wake of the failed acquisition of Onkyo Corporation’s branded A/V division by Sound United last month, as the company now says it will reduce its overhead by cutting jobs. This appears to be the first step in a major reorganization of the company, as it seeks to right-size the organization for the industry’s new, smaller, and more competitive environment in which electronics manufacturers find themselves.
UK based Amina Technologies, manufacturer of so called “invisible speakers,” had for years been in a partnership with Triad who distributed their line. Yet in the wake of Triad’s acquisition by Control4, Amina ultimately chose to split off and go it alone – launching their independent sales effort at CEDIA Expo 2019.
Tech Data, one of the largest technology distributors in the U.S. and globally, has been acquired by Apollo Global Management, a private equity powerhouse, in a deal valued at $5.4 billion. The deal announced today, is expected to close by mid-2020.
A new poll from Gallup suggests that consumers are in the mood to spend – and spend generously – at the upcoming holiday season. How much will they spend? What percentage of Americans say they’ll spend less? Or more? Read below to see the results of this surprising poll…
Toshiba Corp. announced this week that it has launched a large consortium of more than 100 companies in Japan for the purpose of creating new services and products to attack and drive the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) market. Consortium participants are companies of varying size and capabilities that cover the entire spectrum of the market.
With almost two years away from the market after their acquisition by Sound United in January 2018, Classé says it will return to the audiophile electronics market in January 2020 with the launch of their new even more upscale Delta Series line consisting of two new amplifiers and one new preamplifier/DAC. But after so long away, what will it take for the company to re-establish the brand?
It was January 2018 when I reported that Sound United had completed its acquisition of Classé, an acquisition which had been first announced in December of 2017. In the weeks leading up to that December, former owner Bowers & Wilkins was considering getting out of the electronics business…maybe. After months of confusion, where on any day executives at Classé teetered back-and-forth between survival and demise – it now seemed that Sound United had thrown them a lifeline…a chance to live to fight another day.
And then they dropped out of sight for the last two years…
LG Electronics Inc. is on a roll, as evidenced by their fiscal third quarter results. The company says it has set an all-time record for third quarter revenues while at the same time booking their best quarterly profit in a decade.
Korean media is reporting that Sharp, the former Japanese powerhouse brand now owned by Taiwan’s Foxconn, is late on approximately tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars worth of payments to Korean factory gear makers. Not only are they late, but they are said to be demanding even more discounts on the outstanding debt owed to multiple South Korean suppliers of factory equipment destined for use in LCD production factories. All of this is being done in violation of covenants in their purchase contracts with these suppliers.
This dispute may raise to level of government intervention.
