SAN DIEGO -- Describing his keynote at the DisplaySearch Flat-Panel Display Conference Wednesday as “fairly downbeat,” Goldman Sachs Managing Director Matthew Fassler said the future of CE retailing is “not an easy one.” Two walls are closing in on traditional CE retailers, Fassler said. Wal-Mart on one side is pressing for market share and is capitalizing on falling flat-panel TV prices that have entered “their price zone.” And Amazon, he said, “is working to capture market share at the high end.” The combination is creating “long-run pressure” on CE retailers reflected in plummeting stock prices, he said.
SAN DIEGO -- Changes in competition from technology advances, developing markets and maturing of existing markets are changing the landscape of the global flat-panel display industry, speakers at DisplaySearch’s Flat-Panel Display Conference said Tuesday. Future growth will shift to emerging markets “with different needs and characteristics,” said Paul Semenza, senior vice president of analyst services for DisplaySearch, leading to challenges for the supply chain.
3D glasses manufacturer Marchon is preparing for the spate of passive 3D TVs due on the market this year with a multi-pronged distribution strategy that includes CE retail stores, optical outlets and an e-commerce site due to launch within the next 60 days, David Johnson, president of Marchon’s 3D group, told Consumer Electronics Daily. The company is also exploring selling glasses to theater-goers at cinemas, Johnson said, and is testing the concept at select theaters.
Ten years after the launch of the Rhapsody digital music service, the music industry is scrambling to keep up with changing technology and to find a successor to the packaged media revenue model at a time when consumers have more access to music than ever, much of it free. “The subscription is a confusing message,” conceded Brian McGarvey, vice president of Business Development at Rhapsody, speaking on a panel on The Next Wave of Connected Devices at Digital Music Forum East in Manhattan last week. “Device makers make it hard and discoverability has been tough,” he said.
Ten years after the launch of the Rhapsody digital music service, the music industry is scrambling to keep up with changing technology and to find a successor to the packaged media revenue model at a time when consumers have more access to music than ever, much of it free. “The subscription is a confusing message,” conceded Brian McGarvey, vice president of business development at Rhapsody, speaking on a panel on “The Next Wave of Connected Devices” at Digital Music Forum East in Manhattan last week. “Device makers make it hard and discoverability has been tough,” he said.
"CDs are dead,” Ted Cohen, managing partner at TAG Strategic, said Thursday at the Digital Music Forum East in Manhattan. “There’s no reason to own music anymore, when there are so many ways to access it” free and through online subscriptions, he said.
"CDs are dead,” Ted Cohen, managing partner at TAG Strategic, said Thursday at the Digital Music Forum East in Manhattan. “There’s no reason to own music anymore, when there are so many ways to access it” free and through online subscriptions, he said.
A conference call with journalists Wednesday did little to illuminate Russound’s about-face with the Colorado vNet brand. A leak from a dealer to an industry magazine for integrators last week revealed the company’s plans to resuscitate the Colorado vNet home control product line. The company announced in December it had decided to “discontinue shipping the Colorado vNet product line and wind down sales operations” (CED Dec 29 p1). At the time, Charlie Porritt, CEO of parent company Russound, said the company would reassess Colorado vNet product “as it relates to the evolving custom install market and focus on R&D for the future."
In the wake of Borders’ Chapter 11 filing last week, Barnes & Noble has suspended its dividend of 25 cents a share to pad its cash flow with $60 million and give the company “flexibility” to make quick investment decisions “as opportunities arise,” the company said in its fiscal Q3 2011 earnings webcast Tuesday. CEO William Lynch noted that Barnes & Noble had predicted “consolidation in the market” in brick-and-mortar stores and said the company doesn’t plan to shut stores besides the “nominal number” it previously announced. He said “a minority” of Borders’ 200 locations “appear attractive to us.” Profit fell to $60.5 million for the quarter ended Jan. 29 from $80.4 million a year earlier, Barnes & Noble said. Sales rose 7 percent to $2.3 billion. Barnes & Noble shares fell 14.4$15.94 Tuesday. Lynch said Nook sales were “very successful at holiday” and repeated that sales of paper books “are declining.” Quarterly retail growth resulted from Nook sales, attached accessories and expansion of the educational toys and games business, he said. Barnes & Noble’s recent cash flow “has been in digital, so [brick-and-mortar] stores are not where the company sees the greatest return on investment opportunities,” Lynch said. The company will continue to focus investment in the digital area, “where we're seeing the business scale from a sales and profitability standpoint,” he said. Barnes & Noble gained an additional “three or four points” of share in the e-book and digital newsstand market Q3 and now has a quarter of the U.S. market for e-books -- larger than its share for physical books, Lynch said. BN.com’s gross margin rose 50 percent quarter to quarter, indicating “the quickly scaling nature of the digital content business model,” Lynch said. The company sells “twice as many e-books as all formats of physical books combined” on BN.com, he said. The digital newsstand site, which started in Q3, has become the largest seller of Oprah magazine single issues and subscriptions, he said. Despite the dividend suspension and Borders’ Chapter 11 filing, Lynch said, “we still have a very profitable store model.” Comparable store sales increased 7.3 percent for the quarter, higher than the 5-7 percent forecast. Lynch said the company sees its physical stores “as the biggest asset toward the growth of digital content.” Despite the “exciting growth of e-content,” physical books and magazines will continue to account for most of the market for the foreseeable future, he said. “It remains early in the development of the digital reading market.” Barnes & Noble’s physical stores “are critical to the success of our digital strategy,” said Chief Financial Officer Joseph Lombardi. “That’s where we're selling more of our devices -- in our retail stores with our employees selling the device.”
In the wake of Borders’ Chapter 11 filing last week, Barnes & Noble has suspended its dividend of 25 cents a share to pad its cash flow with $60 million and give the company “flexibility” to make quick investment decisions “as opportunities arise,” the company said in its fiscal Q3 2011 earnings webcast Tuesday. CEO William Lynch noted that Barnes & Noble had predicted “consolidation in the market” in brick-and-mortar stores and said the company doesn’t plan to shut stores besides the “nominal number” it previously announced. He said “a minority” of Borders’ 200 locations “appear attractive to us.”