Blogs
Surround Sound: A Look Back
DTS:X and Dolby Atmos are bringing excitement back to the component-audio business. We felt similar excitement 20 years ago when surround sound made its...
Post Type blog
Blogs
Wearables Like Fitbit Make A Difference
One of the happy accidents in covering this business is that you get to travel around the country, and during February I traveled to...
Blogs
Has Celebrity Endorsement Jumped the Shark?
Long ago in 2008, Beats by Dre was launched to an unsuspecting world. Unsuspecting in that its approach to the audience was dramatically different....
Blogs
Will IoT Live Up To The Hype?
Remember the dawn of the Internet? Remember all the skeptics who didn’t see its transformational genius? Remember how it became enormous? It’s happening again....
Blogs
On Starpower’s Success
The following is in response to“Have You Heard The News?”a recent letter by TWICE VP/publisher Ed Hecht. The real question that has haunted many retailers:...
Blogs
Five Things Online Merchants Should Know Before Entering New International Markets
Late last year, Digital River commissioned Forrester Consulting to survey 130 executives and decision-makers at branded manufacturers in the U.S. and U.K. We wanted...
Blogs
Musings On Cord-Cutting
Why must this be so complicated? Here’s what we want: HBO. AMC. Local sports. Some kind of children’s programming. (My older one will watch...
Blogs
Former HTC Exec Tries Hand At Wearables
John Wang, the former HTC executive who left the company in 2012, is back in the mobile market, but this time he’s not planning...
Blogs
TigerDirect Defanged
As RadioShack receives a new lease on life, a chapter closes on another less-storied technology chain. Systemax, the IT supplier, announced last month that...
Blogs
Return To Sender
Wrong color. Missing parts. Damaged. Ill-fitting. Returns are pretty much unavoidable in the world of online retail. Most merchants would agree they’ve had to...
Blogs
High-Res Audio Coming To More Smartphones
Playback of high-resolution 192kHz/24-bit music files — FLAC at least — turned up in the latest HTC One M9 flagship smartphone, and it could...
Blogs
The End May Be Nigh For RadioShack
There are conflicting reports coming out of this week’s bankruptcy auction for RadioShack. Depending on whose unnamed sources you believe, either Standard General won the...
Blogs
How To Avoid Becoming The Next Meerkat
This month should have been the coming out party for Meerkat. For weeks their video-sharing app had been spreading like wildfire, with positive reviews...
Blogs
Retailers Can’t Afford To Ignore Social Media
Today social media is more popular than ever, and that popularity is only going to increase. With the rise of smartphones and tablets, consumers...
Blogs
Selecting The Right Warranty Partner
Sure, extended warranties are often misunderstood by consumers and salespeople, but for retailers they can be used as a competitive advantage that can maximize...
Blogs
Why CE Trade-in Programs Make Sense
Sales of smartphones totaled 1.2 billion units last year, according to Gartner. The opportunity for retailers to capitalize on this massive consumer electronics purchasing...
Blogs
Watch List
The Watch List is an ongoing series that focuses on CE start-ups reaching out to consumers via crowdfunding and other non-traditional methods. Freiya The...
Blogs
Internet Radio In The Car: Still A Way To Go
More people are streaming online music into the car by connecting their smart phone to a car audio system, but among people who do...
Blogs
One More Thing…
Like probably everyone else in our little industry I listened live to the Apple launch event on Monday, and this phrase kept popping into...
Blogs
Amazon Woos Start-Ups With Dedicated Site
Start-ups now have their own dedicated space on Amazon — provided they’re willing to be exclusive to the e-tailer. As the name indicates, Amazon...
Blogs
Apple Watch Features The Media Missed
The humorists at The Onion provided the following list of notable Apple Watch features that were overlooked in the launch hoopla: * 3-megapixel camera enables users to take...
Blogs
Futuresource: Traditional Watches and Smartphones on a Collision Course
At both CES and MWC this year there was a clear design drive to make smartwatches look more like analogue watches in an effort...
Blogs
MWC Shows Wireless Directions For 2015
The 2015 edition of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) emitted strong signals on the directions that the wireless market will take in 2015. Samsung...
Blogs
The Pebble In Apple’s Shoes
Well, it’s another bright, beautiful March here in Silicon Valley, which can mean only one thing: It’s time to get all excited about another...
Blogs
Gaining Advantage In The Bargain Smartphone Game
This week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona we’re seeing a new generation of premium smartphones take the stage from tier-one vendors like Samsung...
Blogs
And Ford Makes Three (Sync 3, Android Auto, CarPlay)
Automakers have talked about combining Android Auto and Apple CarPlay in the same dash, but Ford will go a step farther by giving consumers...
Blogs
Is Pebble Too Big For Kickstarter, Redux
I wrote a blog yesterday that wondered if a product like the Pebble Time is too big for Kickstarter. Will it make it extraordinarily...
Blogs
Wheeler Explains FCC’s Open-Internet Vote
For over a decade, the Commission has endeavored to protect and promote the open Internet. FCC Chairs and Commissioners, Republican and Democrat alike, have...
Blogs
Sears’ Lampert Lays It On The Line
Sears chairman/CEO Edward Lampert brought investors up to speed on the company’s progress and strategies this morning in one of his intermittent and revealing...
Blogs
Is Pebble Too Big For Kickstarter?
Pebble nearly imploded Kickstarter this week when it debuted the latest generation of its smart watch, the Time. Within 32 minutes, the project hit...
Blogs
Microsoft Is Leaking
This has not been a good month for Microsoft, or so it would seem. Since International CES, the notoriously tight-lipped company has become a...
Blogs
Dish: Will It Buy Or Sell?
Dish is coming up against a hard deadline. Sometime in 2016, it must begin building out a cellular network in spectrum that it owns...
Blogs
RadioShack Revisited
Hey, we hate to kick a company when it’s down, but we just couldn’t resist the following twisted timeline from satire publication The Onion....
Blogs
Autosound Aftermarket Evolves Again
In the 1980s, the autosound aftermarket focused on luxury vehicles and teens/young adults. Then the luxury market gradually faded away as luxury automakers upgraded...
Blogs
John Roach, Longtime RadioShack Chief, Bids Company Goodbye
John Roach was chairman and CEO of RadioShack and its corporate predecessor Tandy during the chain’s glory years of 1983 through 1999. He penned...
Blogs
The Real Challenges That RadioShack Faced
I served as VP of merchandising, CE products, for RadioShack from September 2010 to December 2013. This was the last corporate position I held,...
Blogs
FCC Chairman Wheeler Justifies Net Neutrality
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler delivered these remarks today on net neutrality at the Silicon Flatirons Center in Boulder, Colo. For the past several years,...
Another View
RadioShack’s Complicated Legacy
News of RadioShack filing for Chapter 11 is not a shock to many industry veterans and observers — and consumers — who began predicting...
Blogs
Origins Of The OEM Databus
The OEM databus in cars got its start in the mid-1980s when automakers used the term “multiplexing” to describe how they would send control...
Blogs
Tech The Halls: A CE Packaging Primer
Today the consumer tech market generates over $230 billion a year in sales in the U.S. market alone. The Big Four of electronics retail...
Blogs
The Connected Consumer: Top Trends In IoT
Moving The Industry Forward 2015 will be a year of intense experimentation in new value propositions for advanced technologies and services. Multiple sectors within...
Blogs
Deflategate Unlikely to Flatten Super Bowl TV Sales
We are moderate football fans at my house, but preparations for this year’s Super Bowl are nonetheless underway. Our game menu is set, my...