Strategy in TECH...
This week, I ran across yet another in a long line of critical articles about the unreliability of Smart Home technology. This one, from the New York Times, stings a little more, as it updates the well-worn path of complaints about home automation technologies, with a still-uncomplimentary perspective on new A.I.-enabled versions. The blunt conclusion: the Smart Home “Still Doesn’t Work.”
The Reuters News Agency is reporting that Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, is preparing plans to lay off as much as 20% – “or more” – of the entire company. These plans are being made at the same time that the company has said it is preparing to spend at least $600 billion on data centers by 2028 to facilitate its growing artificial intelligence (AI) business.
Sonos, a company that has recently scaled back its research and development team as part of a companywide austerity program to improve earnings, is resorting to some old “tried and true” methods of launching “new” and “innovative” products…by updating previous models. CEO Tom Conrad called it “…building on what already works.”
As such, it has introduced the “new” Play and Era 100 SL models. Will this strategy attract new users???
In a move that has some of Strata-gee’s sources perplexed and scratching their heads, high-end commercial and pro video projector and display manufacturer Barco (Euronext: BAR) announced this week that it has reached an agreement in principle to acquire VerVent Audio Holding (“VerVent” and “Vervent”). VerVent itself was created by the merger of French loudspeaker maker Focal and British high-performance audio electronics manufacturer NAIM some years ago.
WiiM, maker of a line of digital audio and streaming products that make a premium high-fidelity audio experience accessible to all, announced today that it is dramatically expanding its salesforce network in the U.S. It is doing this via the addition of at least six new independent manufacturer representative firms across the country.
Four years ago, in February 2022, Masimo Corporation (Nasdaq: MASI) acquired the major audio company Sound United from Charlesbank Capital Partners in a transaction valued at $1.025 billion. That was a momentous time for Masimo and Sound United, which was about to embark on a crazy sequence of events that would see Masimo’s stock value crash, the company attempt to enter consumer health, the emergence of an activist investment group, a huge lawsuit ensue with Apple, a massive change in the governing Board, founder Joe Kiani quit (or was fired, depending on who you ask), a major cyberattack, and three years later, Sound United sold to Harman International Industries in a deal worth $350 million.
What was also momentous in February 2022 was that Strata-gee began its coverage of Masimo and took that wild and crazy ride along with them. But why am I writing about Masimo now? They’re back by popular demand…
Emerald Expositions (NYSE: EEX), owner of the CEDIA Expo, CEPro, Commercial Integrator, and more, has formally announced on its website that it has decided to “indefinitely postpone” the Total Tech Summit. Quite a buzz erupted on social media as word of this decision spread among those in the custom integration industry.
Sonance, a long-time leading manufacturer of custom integration gear valued by integrators all around the world, has announced its plans for the Integrated Systems Europe Show 2026 (ISE) taking place now in Barcelona, Spain. Key to the announcement is that the company will display in two different “stands” (the European name for a “booth”), one optimized for the professional/commercial channel and another optimized for the residential/marine channel.
The company also announced the launch an all-new, high-performance Ultra Thin-Line VX Speaker.
The industry is all abuzz ever since this past Tuesday, when Sony Corporation announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with TCL “for strategic partnership in home entertainment field.” The announcement goes on to describe, in really sketchy terms with virtually no details, an idyllic or almost utopian vision of how this “partnership” would operate.
But it’s all code. The media has scrambled to spread the news of what they know…which is virtually nothing. Let me help you decode the important meaning of this announcement.
On Wednesday, a new company, RLS Creative Services, announced that it was relaunching Connected Design, a business-to-business, trade media property previously owned and ultimately shut down by former publisher CT Labs’ owner, Messe Berlin (owners of the IFA, an international technology show in Germany). In a formal announcement, the new owner pledged a “renewed commitment to serving the design-forward build environment.”
