Strategy in TECH...
In a result that exceeded economists’ estimates, November overall housing starts jumped an impressive 10.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.173 million units. Well over the revised October rate of 1.062 million units, it also exceeded the 1.007 million units in November last year by 16.5%.
More importantly for our industry, single-family home construction rates jumped as well.
Strata-gee.com editor Ted Green made a guest appearance on AVWeek’s new webcast called AVWeek Special: Residential. Just the second episode of this all-new, residential industry-centric webcast, host Tim Albright led an industry panel that, in addition to Green, included Heather Sidorowicz, Steven Brawner, and Todd Anthony Puma commenting on several hot stories of the day.
Probably the biggest news in business today is that the Federal Reserve Board hiked interest rates for the first time in almost a decade. Wall Street celebrated by driving up stock values in the wake of the news. Yet consumer specialists and others are sounding the alarm. So is the Fed’s rate increase good news or bad news?
Emotiva Audio Corporation is one of those ideas whose core elements initially seemed incongruous – high-end products…sold on the Internet? When we learned of their launch 12-years ago, we predicted doom and damnation. After all, high-end audio, we posited, was as much about the experience -the audition – as it is about the product. Founder Dan Laufman proved us wrong. This week, Laufman caught our attention again when we recently received information about an impressive roster of new models to be launched at CES.
We reported to you last month that, in an unexpected development best described as surprising, two members of CEDIA’s Board of Directors – Bob Brown and Richard Millson – abruptly resigned their positions within 24-hours of each other. We learned of this through our industry sources, not from CEDIA – which has yet to make any official statement about this unusual event. While we were able to confirm the incident had happened, since none of the parties would speak to us about it, we were unable to report on the reasons behind why this double resignation occurred in the first place. Now…we have more information.
Despite its best efforts to turn the corner after its forced disclosure earlier this year of one of the largest accounting scandals ever to jolt the Japanese financial community, Toshiba Corp. just keeps getting hit with more and more bad news. This bad news includes Japan’s financial regulators assessing the largest fine ever in the history of the country for financial mismanagement – ¥7.37 billion or about $60 million.
And now, the very first wave of shareholder lawsuits against former Toshiba executives are filed…and they are big.
Jon Robbins, former President & CEO of now defunct Hi Fi House (Broomall, PA) and one of the first members of the Home Technology Specialists of America (HTSA), will become Managing Director of the organization later this month, taking control of an organization he helped build, Strata-gee.com has learned. Current HTSA managing director Bob Hana will stay on with the organization, with his activities focused more on marketing and operations, Robbins told us.
Adam Levy, one of the original founding executives of SnapAV in 2006 who left the organization about a year ago “to try some other things,” has rejoined the organization and been appointed President. Levy will be in charge of store operations with day-to-day operational responsibility focused on serving their dealers.
Several reports have emerged saying that Apple, Inc. has told suppliers that it is committed to upgrading the displays on its popular iPhone from the current LCD-based touchscreen to an OLED display, starting in 2018. This decision has industry-wide ramifications and has suppliers scrambling to increase the capacity of their OLED factories. There are also competitive ramifications from this decision that is bound to rattle competitors.
Korean media is reporting that Samsung Electronics has re-prioritized its product development plans – now setting its sights on the Internet-Of-Things (IoT) and drone product categories as its targeted growth categories. The company had also been considering pursuing 3D printing, but has put that initiative on the back-burner as it is believed to have a longer horizon to achieve profitability.
