Viewpoint
TWICE Editor-in-Chief Steve Smith discusses the latest headlines that ae affecting the consumer electronics industry.
U.S. Needs National CE Recycling Law Now
A story in today’s Wall Street Journal with the headline “Electronics Firms Fight State Recycling Programs” brings to a head concerns on the part of the CE industry about this critical issue. As we have reported over the past two years, the industry, led by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), is certainly not against recycling. The industry and CEA have tried to stay a ...... Read More
Comments (0)Pogue Knocks ‘Em Dead At CEA CEO Summit
I think Gary Severson of Walmart said it best. Sitting down with Consumer Electronics Association’s Gary Shapiro at the organization’s annual CEO Summit last week in Dana Point, Calif., like a showbiz type from a prior generation, he quipped, “How do I follow him?” Laughter followed. The “him” in this case is David Pogue, New York Times technology c ...... Read More
Comments (0)Smooth DTV Transition Is A Blessing
Well, the DTV transition deadline came and went and things seemed to work out smoothly. Click here for executive editor Greg Tarr’s roundup of how things ended up when broadcast TV went from analog to digital. I’m not going to say, “I told you so,” or even gloat since I never wanted the deadline to be moved. Let’s just say the relative smoothness of the transitio ...... Read More
Comments (2)Buckle Up As DTV Deadline Looms Friday
Finally, no fooling around, this time we mean it — June 12 is it, the deadline for the digital TV transition. That’s the message from President Obama, who moved the deadline from Feb. 17 to this week. The president issued a statement last Thursday that there won’t be any further delays and that everyone who hasn’t prepared for the transition will lose their over- ...... Read More
Comments (0)Where Were You On June 4, 1989?
Where were you on June 4, 1989? I was in Tiananmen Square in Beijing during the pro-democracy protests that eventually resulted in the deaths of hundreds of protesters by Chinese troops. Well, not really. But I felt like I was thanks to technologies developed by the consumer electronics industry. I was in my hotel room in Chicago on the eve of the Summer Consumer Electronics Show and saw and heard ...... Read More
Comments (0)A Turnaround Has Begun
In our May 18 print edition I used the term “Good Riddance” in the headline for my column, and it was accurate. I wrote about 2008. But that was last year. This column is about 2009 and it’s a different story. Things have begun to turn around in CE. How do I know? Well it’s rare that you get to talk to a good selection of distributors, PRO Group retailers and vendors at ...... Read More
Comments (0)Vendors Volunteer Views At PRO Event
The annual PRO Group meeting is nothing if not a meeting of some of the top-level A/V manufacturing executives who are here to nail down orders, as well as take the temperature of the retail clients … and vice-versa I may add. This year’s event was no exception. One new wrinkle was that vendors took more time to candidly volunteer views about the state of the CE industry than ...... Read More
Comments (3)Jet-Skiing On (Lake) Las Vegas
It is a little disconcerting to see jet skis being pulled around a freeway near Las Vegas. But when you ignore new aspects to an area you visit two or three times a year, that’s what happens. I never realized you could jet ski at a place I never really heard of before … Lake Las Vegas. A man-made lake was built there, and condos and resorts followed — one of the resorts being ...... Read More
Comments (2)‘Good Riddance’: An Analysis
The headline for my column in TWICE’s last issue for 2008 was "Good Riddance." Forgive the repetition, but there isn’t any other way to describe what happened at retail in the CE industry (and plenty of other industries by the way) during 2008. For most of the year, the industry endured the constant stream of speculation and bad news coming from Circuit The annual TWICE Top 100 ...... Read More
Comments (0)Good Circuit City, B&H Analysis
Our managing editor John Laposky passed along a story from Inc. Magazine called “Why Circuit City Failed, and Why B&H Thrives” by Joel Spolsky. The piece is a detailed story of how B&H Photo, a one-store operation located on Manhattan’s West Side that opened in the early 1970s and has a thriving online business at www.bhphotovideo.com, has a strong sales and ser ...... Read More
Comments (0)‘End Of The Beginning’
Earnings season is upon us and the overall trend of the numbers should not be surprising to anyone, given the economy. Losses and negative numbers are all over the place, but mixed in with the red ink, layoffs and consolidations are some positive signs that may not all be spin control on the part of these publicly held companies. During times like these you should take good news where you can fin ...... Read More
Comments (0)Plouffe On Obama’s Tech-Savvy ’08 Campaign
A politician who can not only talk about technology but understand new media is a rarity. That he can also give advice to CE execs on how they can use his tactics to get more engaged with customers and employees is almost unheard of at the many Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) meetings I’ve attended over the years. But that’s what I just witnessed at lunch today at the C ...... Read More
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