TWICE News

• NARDA Institute ‘Thinks Big’
  
  By Alan Wolf, January 21, 2004
  Lombard, Ill. - The North American Retail Dealers Assn. (NARDA) and its North American Service Dealers arm (NASD) has opened registration for the trade association’s annual Institute of Retail and Service Center Management.
  
• Motorola Q4 Cellphone Segment Sales Dip 3%
  
  By Jeff Malester, January 21, 2004
  Schaumburg, Ill. - Introduction delays for new cellphones with popular features such as color screens and digital cameras resulted in a 3 percent fourth-quarter drop in sales for the personal communications segment at Motorola.
  
• LG Plasma TVs Appear At Sundance
  
  By Greg Tarr, January 20, 2004
  Park City, Utah - LG Electronics is presenting new flagship HDTV flat-panel television models at this week’s 2004 Sundance Film Festival, which is recognized as a world-class showcase for independent films.
  
• RadioShack Ends RCA Pact, Refines Assortment
  
  By Alan Wolf, January 20, 2004
  Fort Worth, Texas - RadioShack will be deploying “disproportionate amounts of resources” to six core product categories this year —mobile phones, digital imaging, power products, broadband/connectivity, gifts/toys, and wellness — as it continues to refine and rethink its merchandise mix, the company said.
  
• RadioShack Ends RCA Pact, Refines Assortment
  
  By Alan Wolf, January 20, 2004
  Fort Worth, Texas - RadioShack will be deploying “disproportionate amounts of resources” to six core product categories this year —mobile phones, digital imaging, power products, broadband/connectivity, gifts/toys, and wellness — as it continues to refine and rethink its merchandise mix, the company said.
  
• Sony Ericsson Q4 Sales Jump 16%
  
  By Jeff Malester, January 20, 2004
  Tokyo - Phone maker Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, the 50-50 joint venture of Sony and Stockholm, Sweden-based Telefon AB L.M., reported a 16 percent sales increase in the fourth quarter, hitting $1.8 billion, up from $1.5 billion in the year-ago period.
  
• Philips Cuts U.S. Projection TV Team
  
  By Greg Tarr, January 20, 2004
  Knoxville, Tenn. – As part of Philips Consumer Electronics on-going cost-reduction efforts, the company announced it would move approximately 130 jobs in its projection television business creation activities unit here “to other global development centers” over the course of the year.
  
• Philips Cuts U.S. Projection TV Team
  
  By Greg Tarr, January 20, 2004
  Knoxville, Tenn. – As part of Philips Consumer Electronics on-going cost-reduction efforts, the company announced it would move approximately 130 jobs in its projection television business creation activities unit here “to other global development centers” over the course of the year.
  
• Clarification On Jan. 8 NPD Charts In TWICE
  
  By TWICE Staff, January 16, 2004
  New York - The NPD Group Market Share Reports of top consumer electronics categories, which appeared in the January 8 print edition of TWICE on pages 21, 24, 26 and 28 were mislabeled. The data provided was for the 12 months ending September 2003 and was based on consumer data, not POS (point of sale) data.
  
• GE Majap Q4 Profit Rises 19%
  
  By Jeff Malester, January 16, 2004
  Fairfield, Conn. — Although revenue for the consumer products segment at General Electric was flat for the fourth quarter, this division — which includes major appliances — delivered double-digit earnings growth in the three months.
  
• 1st EDGE Smartphone On The Way
  
  By Joseph Palenchar, January 15, 2004
  New York — Nokia unveiled the world’s first EDGE-equipped smartphone, a camcorder-equipped model that AT&T Wireless will offer in la
  
• Speaker, Video Display Designs Reaching Parity.
  
  By Joseph Palenchar, January 15, 2004
  Las Vegas - Audio suppliers hope to reverse the declining attachment rate of quality audio to big-ticket video-display sales with the launch here of component speakers whose graceful, trim cosmetics are as appealing as the cosmetics of flat-panel TVs.
  
• Plantronics Q3 Sales Jump, Net Nearly Doubles
  
  By Jeff Malester, January 15, 2004
  Santa Cruz, Calif. - Increased demand for cellular phone and wireless office headsets pushed up Plantronics’ fiscal third quarter domestic and international revenue by 24 percent, hitting $107.6 million, compared with $86.8 million in the year-ago period.
  
• Samsung CE Profit Turns Black In Q4
  
  By Jeff Malester, January 15, 2004
  Seoul, South Korea - Growing demand for flat screen TVs pushed the digital media, or consumer electronics, division of Samsung Electronics into the black during the company’s fourth quarter.
  
• iPod Drives Apple Into The Black
  
  By Jeff Malester, January 15, 2004
  Cupertino, Calif. - Apple blazed a hot trail into its fiscal New Year with healthy sales of iPod music players and PowerBook notebooks helping the company post a 36 percent jump in revenue, to $2 billion, a four-year high, compared with $1.5 billion in the first three months last year.
  
• SanDisk Intros New Flash Products
  
  By Greg Scoblete, January 14, 2004
  Las Vegas – Calling it a 'disruptive technology,' SanDisk CEO and co-founder Eli Harari outlined his vision of flash memory enjoying a five to ten year unchallenged reign as the removable media of choice for digital cameras, camera cell phones, and other CE portables, at a press conference, here, last week.
  
• Seidenberg Says ‘All Broadband, All The Time’ Due
  
  By Joseph Palenchar, January 12, 2004
  Las Vegas - Verizon chairman Ivan Seidenberg announced plans to invest $3 billion during the next two years to roll make several improvements to its systems.
  
• Digital TV Sales Increase 61.7% To 4.12M In ‘03
  
  By Bob Gerson, January 12, 2004
  Las Vegas - Digital TV (DTV), the unquestioned star of this CES was also the spotlight grabber for dealers last year.
  
• Digital TV Sales Increase 61.7% To 4.12M In ‘03
  
  By Bob Gerson, January 12, 2004
  Las Vegas - Digital TV (DTV), the unquestioned star of this CES was also the spotlight grabber for dealers last year.
  
• Mobile Electronics Briefs
  
  By Amy Gilroy, January 12, 2004
  Las Vegas - Visteon showed a working sample of an OEM HD radio with double DIN screen that can display maps with traffic accident reports that are broadcast over HD radio. Visteon said the first of these units will be available in 2005 through at least one car manufacturer.