Reporters Notebook

April 11, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Private-equity companies Bain Capital and Advantage Partners are the latest companies said to be interested in buying the 49 percent stake in D&M Holdings owned by RHJ International, according to reports from Reuters and Bloomberg quoting anonymous sources. Reports also contend that Merrill Lynch, in partnership with a major retailer outside Japan, is also interested.

That follows reports that Harman International has also been poking its nose into D&M’s books. Now that I can understand. Here’s an opportunity to peek into a competitor’s books. But what do private investment companies see in a group of companies invested in a difficult home audio market and in OEM car audio at a time when auto sales are falling and the world economy is treading water?

A good price?

D&...Read More

April 7, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Two former presidential candidates and the Declaration of Independence put in guest appearances here at last week’s CTIA Wireless 2008 convention.

Ex-candidates John Edwards and Fred Thompson shared the stage on the third day of the wireless trade show, which previously hosted such luminaries as former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, former British prime minister John Major, Colin Powell and Jimmy Carter, not to mention Neil Armstrong, who made a private presentation to invited guests a few years back.

Edwards and Thompson, however, were overshadowed by the appearance of one of 25 remaining copies of the Declaration of Independence printed on ...Read More

September 19, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Amar Bose was completing his engineering doctorate at MIT in 1956 when he walked into one of two RadioShack stores in the country to buy his first hi-fi system. He had no plans to launch a career in the audio industry, nor did he foresee that his resulting obsession with acoustics and psychoacoustics would be shared and taken in unexpected directions by the developers of digital compressed-music formats.

More than 50 years after Dr. Bose walked into that RadioShack store, and decades after other acousticians launched their initial research into perceptual coding algorithms for digital music compression, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) will acknowledge the connection between Dr. Bose and compressed-music formats in October. That’s when CEA inducts the audio industry ...Read More

April 10, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Trade shows are the place to connect with your industry, but the CTIA Wireless show has become a place to connect with the movers and shakers of world history.

This year, former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton shared the stage on the third day of CTIA Wireless. They were the latest in a long line of historic figures to headline the third day’s keynote session, and I hope they won’t be the last.

In years past, Mikhail Gorbachev, former British PM John Major, Colin Powell, and Jimmy Carter made keynote speeches on the last day of the show, and some years ago, a satellite-phone company sponsored a private event at which I heard Neil Armstrong speak.

(Dear Mr. Armstrong: I met Buzz Aldrin a few ...Read More