With the CEDIA Expo 2026 show now firmly in the rear-view mirror, the technology integration market is wrapping up its post-show responsibilities and moving into the fall season.
The fall means for many people the return of football season and shortly the start of the hockey and basketball seasons. In the technology integration market, the fall means starting or finishing projects in the short time frame that leads up to the end-of-the-year and the holiday season.
With this seasonal transition as a backdrop, let’s dive into the KMB Communications Technology Week in Review for Sept. 14-18:
- CE Pro reports on CEDIA study that estimates the size of the smart home industry
- eCoustics posts an item on Dual forming a distribution partnership with Playback Distribution
- Yahoo Finance features a story on the shrinking size of the subscription cable market
- Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei says a slowdown of development is needed with the AI industry
- Boston Logan International Airport is now using AI Concierges
- The Mortgage Matchup Center in Phoenix installed a 226-foot Absen LED display
A Look at Home Technology News
Picking up news from the CEDIA trade group, CE Pro is reporting on a study released by the organization that finds the smart home industry is worth an estimated $33.8 billion.
The study was conducted in partnership with The Farnsworth Group, and the study was developed from the answers targeting 13 categories. The study, CE Pro says categorized companies by size and broke down their respective revenues. Interestingly, the study says small firms produced nearly $10 billion in revenues, while medium-size firms produced $9.5 billion in revenues, and large firms produced $14.6 billion in revenues.
Next up in KMB Communications Tech Week in Review is a news item from eCoustics. The enthusiast website is reporting the classic Hi-Fi brand Dual Turntables is getting exclusive U.S. distribution via Playback Distribution.
The story points out that Dual’s current product line includes a choice of manual and automatic turntables, and the flagship product is the $3,499 CS 718Q.
Additionally, eCoustics says Dual’s upcoming CS 629Q could be an important release in the turntable category as it will offer consumers a fully automatic direct drive solution.
Closing out the residential technology news for the week is a post from Yahoo Finance.
The story says that a decade ago the cable subscription market had 100 million subscribers and today that figure stands at 62 million subscribers. Citing analysts at MoffettNathanson, the research firm estimates the cable subscription market will hit its floor at 50 million subscribers where it will settle at going forward.
KMB Communications Global Technology News
Starting the week off, LinkedIn posted a story on Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei calling for a slowdown of AI development.
Amodei says in the story there is a potential for serious harm to humans if the current pace continues, and supporting this opinion, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue stated, “It’s now clear that alignment is now critical.”
Speaking of AI, Sound & Video Contractor has a story on Boston Logan International Airport using AI avatars to help travelers.
SVConline says Logan Airport has rolled out “Amelia,” a life-size, “hyper-realistic” AI avatar concierge that helps travelers through an airport terminal by using natural conversation and real-time directions.
The story continues by noting the Massachusetts Port Authority or “Massport” to locals, is designed to enhance the airport’s array of customer support services. The story also notes that Amelia was created by Massport in partnership with Proto Hologram and Holomedia AI, and to this point Logan is the biggest airport in the world to have introduced the AI services.
Finally, the last KMB Communications Tech Week in Review item comes from System Contractor News (SCN) and a new 226-foot LED display located outside the Mortgage Matchup Center in Phoenix.
The building the story states, serves as the home for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.
Picking up a LinkedIn post from AVIXA, the SCN item says the display is the largest exterior LED display installed at an NBA/WNBA building. The Absen transparent mesh display measures 226.4 x 41 feet and it utilizes more than 17 million pixels at 60fps.
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