Strategy in TECH...
In a national conference call with sales reps yesterday, Onkyo announced a major restructuring of their sales organization. This overhaul involves consolidating their four major brands – Onkyo, Integra, Pioneer, and Pioneer Elite – into two newly-created divisions.
Crestron Embraces Sonos, Amazon, & OthersAt CEDIA 2016, one of the top themes we identified was companies seeking more and better integrations with other companies’ technologies. In most cases, this expressed itself with companies seeking to have their product lines properly interface with the major control companies. But at CEDIA this year, Crestron took that concept to new heights and in a new direction with their enthusiastic embrace of newcomers to the CI channel…Sonos and Amazon Alexa.
With CEDIA 2016 now over, those of us in the media are left to try and uncover the underlying themes in order to help our readers wrap their heads around just what this particular CEDIA (formerly referred to as the Expo) was all about. But this show is big enough that no one member of the media can possibly visit all booths, talk to all exhibitor executives, and experience all new models. So each of us have our own version of the themes of the show.
Copious numbers of jet planes have made, and are still making their way to Dallas, each carrying within their fully-loaded bellies, hoards of passengers on their annual pilgrimage to the Mecca of technology – the event formerly known as Expo, now known simply as CEDIA 2016.
This morning, the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA) announced that CEDIA EMEA and CEDIA headquarters in the U.S. has been completely “integrated” and is now one entity in whole. The news will be a huge surprise to some, and a point of confusion for others, as not many people understood the relationship between the two organizations. CEDIA EMEA, formerly CEDIA UK, is in fact an independent organization that licenses the rights to use the CEDIA name in Europe.
Now, things have changed.
Despite Crestron’s announcement earlier this year that they will exit the CEDIA show, Strata-gee has confirmed with CEDIA that Crestron Electronics, Inc. will in fact be exhibiting at this year’s CEDIA 2016 next week in Dallas, TX. Crestron will be exhibiting in booth 2510, a booth that they are sharing with Amazon Alexa.
In a letter to dealers sent Thursday evening, Kaleidescape CEO Cheena Srinivasan says the company is back in business, but in a leaner, lower overhead way. The news, which the industry rumor mill was buzzing about all day Thursday, is a bit of a surprise considering the company was completely shut down just a couple of weeks ago.
News comes out of Japan that the new owners of Sharp are in the process of buying back a building the old management sold off when seeking to improve profitability by reducing overhead. Now, new management – made up of former Foxconn executives – are doing an about-face and looking to repurchase the building, in a move that has Japanese media scratching their heads.
Sonos surprised the industry this week with several announcements, some of which were directly targeted at the custom integration market just two weeks before the launch of the CEDIA 2016 show. But one announcement didn’t surprise us – we first told you about it a month ago when we revealed that we had learned that after announcing they were pulling out of the show, Crestron was back…in partnership with none other than Sonos.
AudioControl announced last week that it was launching an all-new program called the Sound Partners Program. But this isn’t just a new program…it’s a unique concept in speaker/amplifier integration.
