Strategy in TECH...
It was a very uncomfortable phone call. The caller? A longtime subscriber to Strata-gee.com’s newsletter, who is also a fairly well-known industry personality. He was passionate. He was adamant. He was fired-up. We had blown it – he told editor Ted Green – and in so doing, had called our very credibility into question.
After only a little more than one year in operation, AudioXperts – a new specialty brand of audio electronics targeted at the luxury consumer market – has closed down operations. According to AudioXperts President Eli Harary, the company was forced to shut down last Friday after a key investor stopped all funding.
Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
Unknown
OEM Systems Company announced at CEDIA that it has appointed industry veteran Richard Frank as its new Director of Marketing/Sales, effective immediately. Saying it sees “favorable market conditions” that it wants to be prepared to take full advantage of, the Reno, NV-based company noted Frank’s extensive marketing and sales development experience in its announcement.
We first met the Rosewater Energy Group at the 2012 CEDIA Expo – a coming out party for the new company that makes a residential energy storage hub with batteries to store your energy from either the power company or renewable sources (i.e. solar or wind) and a capacity large enough to power your whole home with processed and purified 115 volt sine-wave power. Founded by well-known industry personality Joe Piccirilli, Rosewater is on the leading edge of a new concept in energy delivery, storage, and usage.
Multiple news outlets including Reuters, Bloomberg, and the Nikkei reported today that sources at Panasonic are saying the company will exit the plasma TV business by the end of this fiscal year, which ends in March 2014. The news, while not totally surprising, means that there will be no plants anywhere in Japan producing plasma sets, and is likely the beginning of the end for the technology as LCD continues to take a greater share of even larger screen sizes.
When you hire people that are smarter than you are, you prove you are smarter than they are.
R. H. Grant
Yesterday, we reported on an unusual flare-up involving Azione Unlimited, VIA International, and the Home Technology Specialists of America (HTSA) – initially fueled by a press release from Azione that announced VIA was resigning all buying groups. In the wake of this announcement, we contacted both VIA and HTSA, who suggested that Azione’s release was not accurate.
CEDIA’s Expo in 2013 returned to Denver, CO, a favorite location for many attendees and exhibitors – a point to which we can attest as so many said so in Strata-gee’s CEDIA Survey over the last few years. So was Denver the panacea needed to get everyone back into a positive state of mind? Was the show everything everyone hoped it would be?
The new retail buying group Azione Unlimited announced today that VIA International – a new mega-integrator made up of six separate integration companies merged into one – has resigned from all buying groups, effective October 1st. The announcement caught our eye as it was only tangentially about Azione (who lost two members as a result), yet offered assertions about VIA’s actions with no apparent participation from anyone at VIA.
