Yesterday I was pleased to attend the kickoff press conference for this year’s Hope For Education program, developed by Samsung. Since it began in 2004 the program has provided more than $7 million in technology and software to schools in the United States. Hope For Education is an essay-writing contest for students, teachers, administrators and community people. Check our story from yesterday for details. 

I was at the Samsung Experience at the Time Warner Center, here in Manhattan, not only to cover the event but because I’ve been lucky enough to be a Hope For Education judge since it began.

But what happened yesterday really opened my eyes. I was sitting up front with fellow judges and execs from Microsoft and DirecTV with wh...Read More

Comments (1)

Like many others, a day after the announcement that Blockbuster put in a bid to buy Circuit City, I’m still scratching my head. I just don’t see what Blockbuster brings to the party and how it plans to make a winner out of a combined Blockbuster/Circuit City operation.

Freelance contributor David Elrich forwarded to me Dan Burrows’ analysis of the deal for SmartMoney.com which provides a good view of the ins and outs of this bid.

While Circuit City did post a profit in its most recent quarter, sales were down. The chain made a profit by cutting costs, through improvements in its Canadian division, and with some one-time items. Circuit City itself admits it h...Read More

Comments (0)

The D&M rumors continue to fly in fast and furious from Japan. It could still be another illustration of what news coverage has become on the Web.

You may have seen or heard about a JCN Network story filed on Friday, April 11, headlined, “U.S. Retailer Best Buy Joins Race For D&M”. The story seems to be a follow-up to a report from last week that our Joe Palenchar blogged about concerning potential suitors for D&M.

I contacted both Best Buy and D&M in the U.S. this morning to see if there was any truth to the report and, not surprisingly, both said they have policies of not commenting on rumors or speculation. We w...Read More

Comments (0)

While it is always good news when a company posts a quarterly profit, sometimes it doesn’t tell the entire story.

Such is the case of Circuit City, which yesterday reported that for the first time in several quarters it posted $4.5 million in net earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter, ended Feb. 29. The chain posted a profit by lowering expenses, reducing capital expenditures and an improved performance of its Canadian operation InterTAN

That’s good news for the chain, which has been pounded by stockholders such as Ultimate Electronics’ and Wattles Capital Expenditures’ boss Mark Wattles, among others, for poor performance in the market and financially.

The bad news was that for the same-quarter sales were down 5.5 percent and same-store sales were down 10.4 pe...Read More

Comments (2)

Consumer electronics prices across the board will be going up this year.

(Let me repeat that in italics, so you can re-read it with emphasis.)

Consumer electronics prices across the board will be going up this year.

That’s the word from well-placed sources in the industry who have told me this, but wish to remain anonymous for fear of being the bearer of bad news. (As we all know in consumer electronics, the only time prices go up is when a new technology or format is introduced, or when manufacturers introduce next-generation products with added features)

What’s the reason this time? China.

Comments (5)

It seems as if Mark Wattles, the boss of both Wattles Capital Management and Ultimate Electronics, will have some company in trying to change the management of Circuit City, according to a story in today’s Wall Street Journal. This comes on top of the news which broke on Friday that the S&P 500 has decided to drop Circuit City from its index and will replace it with Philip Morris starting Friday, March 28.

...Read More

Comments (0)

Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics, commented during last week’s media roundtable in New York that while Warren Buffett may think the economy is in a recession, there isn’t one in the CE industry. “The bottom line is that consumers are buying CE products,” Glasgow said. He later noted that a premium brand like Sony “holds up in tough economic times.”

His comment reminded me of other economic downturns. Other industry execs have said in the past that when times get tough, consumers will cut back on vacations, eating out and the like, and entertain themselves at home with consumer electronics by replacing some products, buying accessories to upgrade existing items, or buying music or videos. Relating this story to more than one Wall Street analyst during a previo...Read More

Comments (0)

Here’s the headline from yesterday’s New York Times business section: “Unbound, Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write a Blunt and Unfiltered Blog.”

For someone like me — who for years tried to get Wal-Mart merchandise managers to talk about toys and video games, when I covered those businesses years ago, and in the past few years has tried to get access to their CE guys — well, the headline floored me.

In the 1980s when I covered toys and video games, the party line from the Bentonville, Ark., Goliath was, “We don’t speak to the ...Read More

Comments (0)

If the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD contest was a heavyweight championship fight, the boxer’s manager would have stepped in and stopped the match. In this case HD DVD’s manager — Toshiba president/CEO Atsutoshi Nishida — stopped the fight, which enables Toshiba to reinvest in other technologies and results in the CE and movie industries to back one HD disc format, Blu-ray.

Using the boxing analogy again, Warner’s decision on the eve of International CES to back Blu-ray was practically knockout punch that HD DVD that the format really never recovered from.

Li...Read More

Comments (0)

Sometimes you have to read between the lines. Just because an item is all over the media doesn’t mean it’s a news story, even when you’re talking about business news.

For instance plenty of reliable news sources reported this week that retail sales were up a seasonally adjusted 0.3 percent in January, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Wall Street analysts were relieved and used that little tidbit of news to create a rally this week. While everyone is thankful for that many media outlets along with stock analysts downplayed the key part of the story – much of the gain was due to higher gasoline prices. Sales of discretionary items, such as electronics, fell. Our...Read More

Comments (0)

CES still seems like it happened a week or so ago. But we are in the middle of February, and the way the economy is shaping up I'm sure many of you wish we were still in January, traditionally the second-biggest shopping month of the year in CE.

For me, maybe January disappeared a little more quickly because I took the week off right before the Super Bowl, in part to attend a family party out of town and also to catch my breath after the hectic CES season, which seems to begin around October and end in late January.

Maybe it was the Super Bowl hype, or maybe it was because friends and family know what I do for a living, but there seemed to be plenty of buzz about HDTVs and CE in general.

Comments (0)

Las Vegas — Yours truly always complains during International CES to anyone who will listen about how I’m too busy to make booth appointments or to take a look at the show floor. That’s because of all the commitments we have at TWICE involving the TWICE CES Daily (the official daily of the show), www.TWICE.com, www.TWICE.com/ces2008, producing videos for our site, being interviewed by the media — and actually trying to cover some of the news of the show.

As the pictures illustrate, my absence from the show floor is not completely accurate. Here are some of the things I saw on my tour of the show floor.

Comments (1)