Strategy in TECH...
Just a little more than a year after being acquired by AVPro Global Holdings, leading residential and commercial custom integration brand RTI announced this week a dramatic expansion of its commercial amplifier lineup. This new series of DSP matrix amplifiers with accompanying zone controllers brings bulletproof technologies, expanded features, and helps RTI expand its beachhead in the commercial channel.
For a few years now, I’ve been writing about the surprising and durable increase in the rate of growth of revenues generated from what some refer to as “retro” physical media, as tracked by the Recording Industry Association of America. Now, the New York Times is noticing it as well. While streaming still remains the leading format, it is impossible to ignore the massive growth rates for physical media such as vinyl, CDs, and others.
As our industry has transitioned from the retail consumer electronics trade to the more sophisticated, professionally installed home automation and smart home systems based on IP networks with sophisticated and sensitive control systems, the game has changed. Sensitive equipment like the electronics being installed today can be susceptible to power supply quality issues. This can lead to system performance problems, equipment failures, reduced system lifespans, unhappy clients, and profit-robbing additional truck rolls to try to solve often vexing, intermittent conditions.
Now integrators can offer an affordable and effective solution called Wavecrest that prevents these problems from occurring in the first place.
Savant Systems, Inc. (Savant), a leading smart home and smart energy solutions provider, has been selected by real estate developer U.S. Development to be the exclusive smart home technology provider for two of its ultra-luxury residential complexes. These two complexes are both based in Florida, and they are Salato Pompano Beach and Viceroy Residences Clearwater Beach.
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the largest contract manufacturer in the world of chips used in a wide variety of tech products, including for data centers for AI solutions, has informed clients that it will be raising prices for both advanced and mature chip production services by as much as 10% or more in 2027. The reason for the increase is to offset rising costs for materials, manufacturing equipment, and construction of new overseas chip plants, multiple sources told Nikkei Asia.
In a surprising exposé resulting from a deep investigation by the Nikkei, we have learned that Big Tech is engaged in questionable practices in order to conceal from investors the true amount of debt they are taking on to pursue building out their AI infrastructure with more and bigger…and more expensive…data centers. How big of a deal is this? Huge! In the last four years, debt not reflected on five of the big AI tech companies’ balance sheets – known as “hidden debt” – totals an estimated $1.65 trillion. Yes…trillion, with a “t”.
AVPro Edge, part of the AVPro Global family of brands, announced today that it has refreshed its popular MXnet switch lineup with the new P-Series. The company says that its MXnet 1G switches are its best-selling switch line. With the new MXnet P-Series, the company looks to push scalability to new heights.
For a few months now, we’ve been seeing a moderation in enthusiasm on Wall Street for Artificial Intelligence (AI) investment. On several occasions, a major tech company would announce a new multi-billion-dollar investment to acquire chips or other AI technology…or to build huge data centers to train LLMs…only to see their stock value crash. In a nutshell, investors are coming to believe that there is no way AI can hit a level of success great enough to repay the now trillions of dollars of collective investment by big Tech to create it.
Then, this week, Ford Motor Company announced it would rehire more than 300 engineers who had been let go to turn their jobs over to AI. Ford admits its AI ambitions failed and has rehired these “graybeard” veteran engineers with decades of experience to improve product quality.
Crestron Electronics, a global leader in smart home and home automation, announced this week that Configure Pro, originally announced a few months ago, is now available. This is great news for Crestron integrators, as the all-new system configuration platform is a substantial upgrade over the previous Crestron Home Setup application and offers greater approachability, easier and faster operation for more efficient and consistent installations, and so much more.
Kaleidescape, a leading provider of high-resolution movie players and high fidelity movie content for the custom integration channel, announced today the launch of the all-new Strato K flagship movie player. The Strato K supports 8K movies as well as a new, higher fidelity format they call 4K Cinematic™.
