Strategy in TECH...
Azione Unlimited, a national dealer buying group, announced earlier this week that it has added Thorens turntables to its vendor lineup. Thorens is distributed in the United States by Vancouver, BC-based Rutherford Audio, who also has outlets in Seattle, WA and Denver, CO.
Toshiba Corp. has launched an aggressive strategy aimed at turning around its troubled, money-losing television manufacturing business. We wrote last week about their decision to close a manufacturing plant in China in a bid to restructure their production base – one part of a larger TV turnaround strategy. Now word comes of additional aggressive moves by the company attempting to return their once vaunted TV business to profitability.
On Monday, CEDIA launched an all-new website that represents a dramatic leap forward from their previous offering and provides a much more accessible way for members and other “customers” (more on this later) to learn, communicate, and manage their relationship with the trade group. A complete overhaul, CEDIA’s Senior Director of Public Relations & Marketing Jamie Riley told us in a phone interview that this website has been under intensive development for two years.
Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.
Ralph Charell
Japan takes its television business very seriously. A while back, we told you that a consortium of manufacturers and broadcasters were testing a new broadcast system based on 8K…no, not 4K…8K resolution that they called Ultra HDTV. I guess they’ll have to come up with a new name for that, now that it’s been used for current 4K systems here in the U.S.
Now word comes out of Japan of another new broadcasting test to start sometime next year – an all-new interactive TV system that goes well beyond what we know as “smart” TVs.
Outerwall, Inc. (f/k/a Coinstar), owner of Redbox – the national video rental kiosk powerhouse – made several surprising announcements on Tuesday that suggest the company is dealing with some serious business issues. First, the company announced that Redbox division president, Anne Saunders, has left the company. And second, the company said that it would make significant cuts to its staff…and to other projects.
Spotify, the popular music sharing app, announced today that it will offer streamed music to smartphones for free (ad-supported), starting today. Spotify has long offered this capability on desktop computers for free (again supported by advertising), but had required a paid subscription (ad free) for mobile devices. Now…everything changes.
The company also announced that it has exclusively licensed the rights to stream music from rock icons Led Zeppelin…also starting today.
Clare Controls, a mid-level manufacturer of home automation products, announced on Tuesday that it has appointed the New York Marketing Team as its sales representative for the New York Metropolitan market. The appointment is effective immediately.
In an announcement earlier this month that could be characterized as counter-intuitive, Toshiba Corp. said it will stop manufacturing LCD televisions at its plant in Dalian, China by the end of December. The company says the move is aimed at helping improve profitability – even though most companies opened plants in China to take advantage of the lower labor costs to help their profitability.
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.
Leonard Bernstein
