Strategy in TECH...
GoldenEar Technology, a manufacturer of more affordable high-end loudspeakers, has announced a new top-of-the-line model that takes speaker performance to an even higher plane. The company calls this new model the Triton Reference, and has positioned it above its highly acclaimed Triton One tower speakers.
Thiel Audio, in a series of press releases on their website, announced multiple new products to be launched at this week’s CES in Las Vegas. Some of these new products are being launched under the Thiel brand name, while others are being offered under the Aurora brand – a brand that was originally created for a 4K music venue at the company’s headquarters in Nashville, TN.
This launch represents what the company hopes will be the next chapter in the troubled brand’s long-running saga.
One of the keynote presentations at CEDIA 2016, was from Amazon – the monster online retailer. Amazon executive Charlie Kindel introduced the custom integration attendees to the Amazon Echo, Tap, and Dot…essentially Internet appliances that all feature their Alexa voice control technology. Then, late in the presentation, Kindel announced the company has developed a way for Alexa to interface with home systems – and even forged integration partnerships with Lutron, Crestron, Control4 and others.
Startup software provider TRXio announced this week that it has joined Home Technology Specialists of America (HTSA) and fully participated in the organization’s Fall Conference last month in Chicago. The move is seen as another step on the road to greater awareness and acceptance of the company’s prime offering – inventory tracking software.
Strata-gee editor Ted Green was a guest panelist on this week’s ResiWeek webcast (recorded on Halloween), a production of AVNation.tv. Hosted by Matt Scott, the panel, which also included Jason Griffing of Harrison Home Systems and Jason Knott of CEPro, covered a range of topics in custom integration.
In our wrap-up of the top stories from CEDIA 2016, #3 was “Managed Services are Growing.” One such service was OneVision Resources, which will partner with integrators to offer remote system monitoring and customer support. At CEDIA 2016, residential networking provider Access Networks also announced that they will be launching a new Live Monitoring solution.
Most new start-up companies like Millson Custom Solutions (MCS) choose to develop a new product concept and spend their first year setting up distribution, making sure internal systems operate smoothly as sales begin to happen, and in general scale slowly before they take that next step in expansion. It’s sort of a crawl before you walk – walk before you run strategy.
But not MCS – no sooner did they get their remarkable CinemaFrame launched, then the company rolled out a second product, their RSMS Roller Shade Mounting System and then a third product, the FutureFrame.
CEDIA 2016, like every trade show, for us is like trying to get a sip of water from a fire hose. There is just so much going on. And since all stories interest us – we have to go into a kind of marketing triage, quickly sorting those stories that we feel are the most compelling.
So, in this post, we want to share with you some of the more interesting things – and people – we saw and chatted with on the show floor.
Security & Thermostats are Top Smart Home PrioritiesBeing the marketers that we are, when we heard that Houzz was going to present the results of their first ever Smart Home Trends Study at CEDIA 2016, well we put that on our schedule. At the appointed hour, we listened closely as Liza Hausman, Houzz’s Vice President of Industry Marketing and Dave Pedigo from CEDIA patiently went through and explained the results – and while the results were unremarkable, they were interesting nonetheless. And, there were a couple of surprises.
We first reported on the new SpeakerCraft Dolby Atmos enabled AIM speakers at the 2015 CEDIA show (then called the Expo). A clever way to extend their line and tap into the enthusiasm many have to advanced surround sound systems like Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and Auro3D – SpeakerCraft designed a high-performance alternative to standard in-ceiling height speakers.
