After a couple weeks of relative peacefulness, the electronics industry has picked back up with several news stories. Looking at what are some of the most important items from this past week, here is the KMB Comm Tech Week in Review for April 20-24.
Focusing on these items, the Tech Week in Review will look at residential technology news from Klipsch, Loewe, and the video game community. Moving onto the commercial technology market, Sennheiser made the news cycle this week, and national items include news on Apple and AT&T.
KMB Comm Residential Technology Weekly Wrap-Up
Starting the week off, AV Nirvana posted a story on Ojas, which the website explains is the creative identity of the artist Devon Turnbull.
The story points out that Ojas has once again teamed up with the large audio manufacturer Klipsch to take part in Milan Design Week with the kO-R2 speaker system. This limited-edition speaker is a two-way, sectoral horn product that features an Ojas-designed multisectoral horn made from aluminum.
The speaker’s cabinet is made with Baltic birch, and AV Nirvana says only 600 pairs will be produced.
KMB Comm has been following this story since it was announced—the French audio company Cabasse had entered receivership. eCoustics is now reporting the German luxury electronics manufacturer Loewe has acquired the brand.
The eCoustics’ post reports that Loewe purchased Cabasse for €400,000 (approximately just over $468,000 U.S.). The story goes on to say that Cabasse will continue to operate independently, and this news follows Loewe’s recent announcement to return to the U.S. market.
Covering a topic that’s not normally talked about in the technology integration market, the video game industry has a controversy brewing with the, “Stop Killing Games” campaign. The basis of this movement is the gaming community’s dissatisfaction with video game developers ending the support of game titles that gamers have paid to keep playing.
According to the website stopkillinggames.com, the movement has more than 2 million global supporters, along with more than 10 legislative inquiries, and a petition with over 1.4 million signatures.
The point this video game movement argues is that once a consumer purchases a game, the consumer should own the game, and the game should not have an expiration date.
A Tour of the Commercial Market and Some National News
Shifting gears into the commercial AV industry, AVNation had a post this past week on a major firmware update for the Sennheiser Profile Wireless system. The story states the firmware (v5.0.0) adds Bluetooth connectivity to support wireless connections directly to smart devices and computers.
The story goes on to point out that its receivers still provide the highest level of performance, but the free firmware update increases system flexibility for users.
Time for some KMB Comm national news.
As gas prices and inflation continue to rise, consumers are looking for cost relief wherever it is available, and AT&T is providing cost relief to a surging number of customers.
Yahoo Finance posted a Reuters wire story on AT&T adding more wireless subscribers than it had expected during the first quarter of the year. The post says that subscribers are taking advantage of bundled service packages that combine wireless and high-speed fiber Internet.
Reuters reports that just over 40% of AT&T households that utilize its home Internet service are also using its wireless services.
At closer look at why the company exceeded expectations, AT&T points out that it has added 294,000 net monthly bill-paying wireless phone subscribers during the first quarter. The company had expectations of adding 272,000. As part of its consumer strategy, AT&T raised the prices on its lowest and highest wireless tiers to push users into its middle tier products.
One more national technology news item to close out the KMB Comm Tech Week in Review.
Yahoo’s Tech News site picked up a BBC story on Apple’s 65-year-old CEO Tim Cook stepping down from the high-profile position.
Apple, the story notes, has gone on to appoint its vice president of hardware John Ternus to the newly vacated position. The BBC story suggests that Ternus’ biggest challenge as CEO will be how the tech giant handles the explosion of AI.
The expectation the story adds is that Ternus and Apple will continue to take a cautious approach to AI unlike some companies that have aggressively pursued AI-based opportunities.
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