Strategy in TECH...
CES 2020, the big show, is about over (ending the day this was posted) and as usual there are a slew of announcements. It can be a little overwhelming with so much happening in Las Vegas, but there are some stories that flat out are just more important or interesting than others.
As we hurtle headlong into the a new decade – the 2020s – it’s a good time to pause and take stock of some of the major events of our industry’s recent history by ranking the Top 10 Strata-gee stories of 2019 based on total page views. This ranking shows just what stories drew the most attention of Strata-gee’s eminently intelligent and inquisitive readers.
Sony announced that is has promoted two of the members of its team to new roles in the wake of the recent retirement of Gary Frankel, Western Regional Sales Manager. Both new appointments are in their “award-winning” AV Specialty and Custom Integration sales group and were made effective as of September 1, 2019.
Much like any trade show, CEDIA Expo 2019 was full of optimism and good cheer. But with just a few questions to top executives of major exhibitors it is fairly easy to pierce that veil of good cheer to reveal underlying concerns of approaching economic storm clouds. I chatted with Frank Sterns, Sony’s Vice President of AV Specialty/Custom Integration, about the turbulent waters our industry is sailing through and how Sony is faring in the face of these increasing headwinds.
A funny thing happened this year at the 2019 CEDIA Expo…everyone I ran into kept asking me the same thing – what is the big story from the show? What’s funny is that I asked them the same question. Even when I ran into other members of the media…we often queried each other. Most kind of shrugged and would mention an item or two, but nothing that represented a major theme of the event.
However, there is an answer I came up with, but I’m not sure its the best answer…
There’s been a lot of action this week on the OLED beat – in this case, news that holds promise for a new robust competitor in the OLED market. The company, known as JOLED (for Japan OLED), is a joint venture between two TV powerhouse brands and a major display manufacturer that has successfully raised money to complete a new OLED factory.
In a new survey by Reputation Institute on corporate reputation, known as the 2019 RepTrak 100, we see wild swings in tech brands’ reputation with consumer privacy concerns finally appearing to take a major toll. With an overall all-category average reputation rating increase of +0.8 points, technology as a segment saw its collective reputation drop by 1 full point on the scale.
But the news wasn’t all bad – movie king Netflix, Inc. jumped 23 spots to come in at #1 for the first time in their history.
CES 2019 is over the hump, closing tomorrow. But the top tech stories are pretty big and pretty clearly defined – and will be quite exciting, when they appear…someday. The top tech stories include – LG’s rollable, bendable OLED displays, Artificial Intelligence (AI), 5G – the next generation wireless tech, 8K TVs, autonomous vehicles – both car and motorcycle, and Apple & Siri strike back.
Cool Things I Saw at CEDIA Expo 2018San Diego, we hardly knew ye’! CEDIA Expo 2018 wrapped up this past Saturday and after three days of running between meetings and walking the show floor, I emerge relatively unscathed. The bottom line – this first Emerald Exposition-produced show was a bit of a mixed bag with some positive elements and some dropped balls. But overall, most came away satisfied that it was a good show.
With all that’s going on in the world of politics – or perhaps because of what’s going on in the world of politics – two senators are calling for an investigation of the Smart TV industry, citing concerns about a potential compromise of privacy for users of which they are unaware. This move is in response to news that emerged a few weeks back suggesting that Smart TV makers were tracking users viewing, unbeknownst to them.
