Strategy in TECH...
Nice, a global manufacturer of Smart Home, Security, and Home & Building Automation products based in Italy, announced today that it has acquired Nortek Security & Control – purchased from Melrose plc for $285 million. The move expands Nice’s portfolio and strengthens its North American presence.
Rarely in the affordable high-performance audio market are product designers able to offer a solution that possesses an optimal combination of convenience, attractive design elements, and performance. But Pangea Audio, out of Grand Rapids, MI, has been able to achieve this holy trinity with their new Vulcan Turntable Wall-Mount Shelf.
A leading tech industry-focused executive search firm, The Park West Group, has recently expanded by adding Mark Crandell as its Managing Director. The company, which touts the tagline “Wired for Success,” says this expansion of its team will both help to drive organizational effectiveness and open new opportunities for growth.
As I am sure that most readers of this post will know, during CEDIA Expo at the beginning of September, I published a continuously updated post tracking which previously announced exhibitors subsequently made the decision to pull out of the event as the COVID Delta variant raged on. A remarkable realization occurred as I worked on that post, literally speaking with dozens, if not hundreds, of exhibitors and attendees for that event – many of them were confused about who owned the CEDIA Expo!
Last Friday, Strata-gee broke the news that both Cheena Srinivasan and Michael Malcolm, co-founders of Kaleidescape, had left the company recently to pursue new opportunities. (A third co-founder, Dan Collens, left the company back in 2006.) Kaleidescape, the leading media server manufacturer in the upscale residential space, is an important supplier to many custom integrators, so this is a big change. Late Friday, after Strata-gee broke the news of the change, the company put out a formal statement on the situation.
Earlier this week, sources told Strata-gee that Kaleidescape co-founders Michael Malcolm and Cheena Srinivasan have left the company. Malcolm is said to have left a couple of months ago and Srinivasan reportedly left the organization just last week.
A few weeks back while on a work assignment unrelated to Strata-gee, I had the opportunity to meet for the first time Alice Schmalzl, the new Chief Operating Officer (COO) at CT Lab, the company that owns Dealerscope, Connected Design, and the CE Week show. During the course of a lunch meeting lasting over two-hours, Schmalzl was engaging, articulate, thought-provoking, refreshingly transparent, and funny. I found her incredibly smart, with a strong business foundation, and I sensed she possessed a steely inner-toughness. I resolved then and there to interview her for a Strata-gist profile for Strata-gee readers.
IPORT, a Sonance company, announced this week it is launching an all-new, totally redesigned IPORT Connect Pro line of products. IPORT is an award-winning line of products that hold, charge, and protect tablets in a residential or commercial space. IPORT Connect Pro takes its already user-appreciated design and utility to the next level.
Over the last few weeks, a buzz began to swirl around yet another major tech industry trade event, the NAB Show, set to run from October 9-13 in Las Vegas, NV. The buzz was a series of rumors that exhibitors may begin pulling out of the event. Then last week, major exhibitors Sony and Canon did exactly that by withdrawing from NAB Show, both citing the COVID Delta surge in infections and the need to protect their employees’ and partners’ health and well-being first and foremost.
Quickly taking their cue, the NAB announced today that the event will be canceled as “…the Delta variant has presented unexpected and insurmountable challenges for our global community.”
LG Electronics announced today that it is targeting the super-luxury residential market with a new wall-sized display based on Direct View LED (DVLED) technology. They call their new series DVLED Extreme Home Cinema and while they are not the only purveyor of the technology, LG says they are best positioned for success in the category due to their “years of [experience] building premium consumer electronics, keen understanding of affluent consumers and deep expertise as an innovator of DVLED technologies.”
