Part II of my post-CES ravings; each of the next few posts includes a quick look back on 2005 trends and a quick discussion of products introduced at CES 2006.
In 2005…
To try to appeal to the flat panel TV crowd, speaker manufacturers at all price points built flat speakers, small speakers, and speakers intended to be mounted on the wall (some with just one cabinet to simplify wiring, or wireless rear speakers). Big brands did well with these offerings, but they tended to pull sales from elsewhere, not grow the category. The other approach was to develop a line of in-wall speakers, some with high end pedigrees and/or THX certification. Unfortunately, it takes time for CEDIA installers to pick up new brands (installers are a conservative bunch, as you don’t ever want to have to service something installed in a wall or built into a cabinet), so the jury is still out on this strategy. To compensate for lower ASPs and margins, most speaker manufacture was moved to Asia.
At CES 2006…
We saw more of the same. What we have not seen yet are Chinese speaker manufacturers selling direct to U.S. consumers under their own brand names, taking the Aperion.com business model and eliminating the middleman (Aperion). That has started in the enthusiast space to a degree with companies like nOrh, but has not moved into the mainstream. Yet.
We also saw one company move decidedly in a different direction: Jamo introduced the 909's, a $15,000 pair of speakers that do not have a rear cabinet. The idea is simple: no enclosure, no possibility for audible colorations of the sound due to the cabinet. From a market perspective, this makes even more sense - audiophile consumers who are willing to have a free standing set of speakers in their room probably want to show them off. Why not let them really show off the guts of the speakers by doing nothing to hide them? If Jamo is smart, it will release lower priced versions of the 909's including a center channel and matching surrounds for home theater (the surrounds will probably need cabinets for wall mounting).
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