Industry insider
JAPAN: how the once-thriving LCD business is now starting look a bit rocky
The Japanese TV industry is heading for something of a culture-shock. Not only are domestic sales tumbling – last month's sales were down 38% year-on-year, and revenues down 58% – but imported brands are beginning to make headway in a market ...
Pro-ject: still re-inventing 20 years on
I’ve been in Vienna, attending the 20th anniversary of Pro-ject, the company often cited as being almost single-handedly responsible for the vinyl revival. But while founder and president Heinz Lichtenegger gave us a look back at the ...
More headphones, bigger TVs and a passion for BBC Radio 4 - UK consumer electronics trends revealed
UK households are harbouring 46 million TVs, buying 24,000 pairs of headphones a day, enjoying over a million new smartphones a month and purchasing more consumer electronics online than anywhere else in Europe. These are just some of the ...
Inside Sonos - on a mission to play all the music on earth
The Sonos Head Office is an exciting place to be. Not just because it’s in chic Santa Barbara, California, but because the company, famous for its wireless multi-room systems. is so busy thinking up new ways to fulfill its aim to ‘play all the ...
EXCLUSIVE: Ken Ishiwata talks upgrades, keeping ahead of the game and why there's life in the old CD yet
As Marantz prepares to launch the successors to its Award-winning CD6003 CD player and PM6003 stereo amp – see news on the CD6004/PM6004 here – we caught up with the company's Brand Ambassador and all-round audio guru, Ken Ishiwata, to talk more ...
Behind the scenes at Cambridge Audio
The recent news that Cambridge Audio is setting up a new technology hub in the city of its birth, Cambridge, will come as little surprise to those who’ve been watching the company closely of late.Like many in the hi-fi business, it’s realised ...
Interview with Sonos founder and CEO John MacFarlane
Regular readers will have seen us announce the news of the new Sonos Play 3, the aggressively priced new addition to the company’s range of ‘wireless hi-fi’ products.And in the September issue of What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision, on sale today, our ...
JAPAN: Dumped CRT TVs pile up as this weekend's digital switchover approaches
We've covered in past reports the unexpected upswing in demand for new TVs in Japan as this weekend's switchover to all-digital broadcasting approaches. But now there's the problem of getting rid of all the CRT TVs and early flatscreen models ...
JAPAN: Sudden spike in TV demand catches out the big names
Most of Japan's TV industry was beginning to suspect it had seen the glory days of domestic sales, with an eco-points scheme last year doubling demand in the run up to the New Year holidays.But now it seems the forthcoming switchover to digital ...
CHINA: From no future to market leader – visiting Epson's massive projector manufacturing facility
It’s quite a distance from deciding your company has no future in manufacturing LCD projectors to be becoming the global market leader, but it’s a distance Epson has travelled in the space of two decades, as I've been discovering on a visit to ...
