Strategy in TECH...
Sound United announced today that it has closed on its acquisition of Bowers & Wilkins (B&W), as expected. With this deal, B&W is rejoined with Classé – a high-end electronics manufacturer that itself was once part of B&W but then was acquired by Sound United back in Jaunuary 2018.
One of the questions I’m frequently asked is, “When will the economy bounce back to pre-COVID levels so we can all get back to normal?” The answer: We won’t “bounce back” to a pre-pandemic economy, and “normal” won’t be the same. The details on this answer is a topic for another post, but suffice it to say that one of the reasons is due to emerging, unforeseen variables, such as deteriorating employee mental wellbeing issues.
And THAT IS the topic of this post. Two new surveys provide troubling but important data that will impact how – or if – you re-centralize your team…if that’s your plan.
Bloomberg News reported late on Monday that Apple is dropping Sonos [NASDAQ: SONO] and other non-Apple branded products from their stores. The news of Sonos losing such a major customer caused their stock to derail in after hours trading, down almost 7% in value at one point. On Tuesday, Sonos stock price closed down 3.2% as Wall Street digested the news.
Emerald Expositions announced today that CEDIA Expo Virtual drew 7,600 trade professional registrations for their three day run from September 15-17, 2020. Although this figure is less than half the attendance at the live, in-person version, Emerald considers it a great success as an all-virtual event.
It must be really interesting in those Sonos and Google joint product development meetings, where the parties meet to discuss their partnership on the Google assistant technology built into Sonos products. You see, in addition to this product partnership, both companies are ensnarled in a nasty round of lawsuits accusing each other of various patent violations – with tactics and rhetoric heating up as each fired new salvos at the other just this week. On Monday, Google sued Sonos. On Tuesday, Sonos sued Google. This is getting serious…
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!
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.
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.
