Strategy in TECH...
Universal Remote Control, Inc. (URC) has had a round of layoffs heading into the holidays. Taking place last week, the remote control giant has made cuts to its team that represent approximately 6% of their total workforce.
If you saw my recent article on the Emerald Expositions’ leadership turmoil (See: More Leadership Turmoil Hits Emerald Expositions), in addition to covering the fact that their new CEO (just started in June) was leaving the company at the end of the year, I also provided some sobering key figures from their recent fiscal third quarter results report. I have done a deeper dive into their report, only to uncover even more troubling information.
Rumors abound for the last few days and now we learn it’s true, Frank Sterns, former Vice President of AV Specialty/Custom Integration for Sony, has left that position to join Sound United as Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations – Americas. This new role will begin on January 6, 2020.
You knew they were big, but you didn’t know just how big streaming innovator (and leader) Netflix really was…until now. In a bid to prove to investors they have what it takes to stave off a whole new class of streaming competitors, Netflix released some detailed numbers on their global subscription base that has Wall Street really buzzing.
The Census Bureau, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, released new home construction data for November, offering details on what is generally known as housing starts. The overall construction starts – which includes both single-family and multi-family homes – both showed increases over the revised numbers for October, suggesting a return to economic stability after a period of concern about a possible slowdown.
Denon announced yesterday a new series of wireless multiroom speakers featuring their HEOS Built-in technology. The new models, said to be part of their Denon Home series, brings all the advantages of the wireless, multiroom category…with the added benefit of hi-resolution sound thrown in to boot.
Emerald Expositions Events, Inc. (Emerald) (NYSE:EEX), parent company to the CEDIA Expo show and industry trade magazines CE Pro & Commercial Integrator, announced this week that CEO Sally Shankland will be leaving the company by the end of this year. Shankland was appointed CEO just this past June 2019, and has said she will step down “for personal health reasons.” Once again, the organization is plunged into a leadership vacuum which began just one year ago with the sudden resignation of then-CEO David Loechner.
As many integrators seek to pitch their clients on the many wonders of converting their dumb homes into “smart” homes, there are growing indicators that the promise of the smart home is not being reliably delivered up to this point…and may never be, according to one respected industry expert. And there is a growing chorus of others who appear to agree – possibly including Google, who is trying to manage expectations by relabelling the smart home as the “helpful home.”
In a letter to the media early Tuesday evening, Richard Stoerger announced the likely impending closure of Audio Design Associates (ADA), a company that was a founding member of CEDIA and a significant driving force in the early days of the “CEDIA channel.” The letter itself never explicitly explains the reasons for the possible closure, only offering vague allusions to: difficulty to “defeat the noise generated on a public level”… and … that they “just ran out of time and money”… and … a failure to “reckon with” how “difficult and expensive” it is to tell one’s story.
As longtime readers may suspect, I am a bit of a newsy and as such, subscribe to an amazing array of sources of news and information. One such source is Fred Wilson, a cofounder of Union Square Ventures (USV), a New York City-based venture capital firm, who is a favorite of mine. Wilson does something that I admire and don’t seem to be able to equal – he posts to his blog EVERY day. Some of his posts are short, some long, some trivial, some surprisingly impactful.
Recently, Wilson (his blog: AVC, as in “A Venture Capitalist”) posted an item that really resonated with me – it’s about grinding…and I wanted to share this with Strata-gee.com readers. It is important…
