That CEA changed its 2010 3D TV sales outlook for the fourth time in less than a year means that “in retrospect,” it would have been “better off sticking with its original 2.2 million unit forecast,” CL King analyst Lawrence Harris said in a research note Friday. Thursday, CEA said it’s now forecasting 2.1 million 3-D TVs will be sold in the U.S. this year (CED July 23 p8). In December, it projected the industry would sell 2.2 million sets then raised its forecast to 4 million just after CES, only to downgrade it to 1.1 million units a month later, Harris said. “Don’t touch that dial,” Harris quipped, warning investors CEA likely will change its forecast again. “The extreme variability in the CEA forecasts only emphasizes the early aspect of the transition to 3D TV, in our opinion,” he said. But CEA has for decades “produced the most comprehensive data program in the CE industry,” spokesman Jason Oxman told us by e-mail Friday. “We regularly update our projections every six months -- in January and July -- and we base those projections on industry consensus, meaning we receive forecast data directly from the manufacturers that make the products and the retailers and installers that sell them. As they update us with their projections, so, too, do we update the inputs into our forecasts.” CEA’s January 3D TV sales forecast and last week’s update “are part of the regular process of releasing our consensus forecast, including for those nascent categories like 3D TV that are challenging to project,” Oxman said. “There were never four different forecasts, and indeed to call CEA’s regularly scheduled forecast updates ‘revisions,’ is to misunderstand the nature and function of our CE Market Metrics program.”
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
Netflix expects before its next quarterly earnings call, in October, to launch “a major new version” of its Sony PS3 streaming user interface that won’t require a disc “and is dynamically updated continuously with the latest Netflix UI improvements,” CEO Reed Hastings said Wednesday.
Panasonic will round out its 3D TV offerings for “general distribution” in calendar 2010 with a GT25 series of lower-priced 1080p plasma 3D TVs, Henry Hauser, vice president of the company’s display group, confirmed in an interview Thursday. Shipping by late August will be 42- and 50-inch sets planned for “broader distribution” than the retailers that sold Panasonic’s first VT series of plasma 3D TVs when they were introduced in March, he told Consumer Electronics Daily.
The former Koss Corp. executive indicted in January for embezzling $34 million from the company to buy herself expensive clothes, jewelry, cars and vacations (CED Feb 2 p1) will plead guilty to all six counts of wire fraud against her and pay “full restitution” for her crimes, says a plea agreement filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee. Company CEO Michael Koss didn’t respond to requests for comment about the plea agreement, and he hasn’t replied to numerous inquiries about how the crimes went on for five years without being discovered.
If Sony Electronics in the U.S. is to fulfill its goal of becoming the market leader in 3D TVs, it won’t come under the watchful eye of its long-term president, Stan Glasgow. Phil Molyneux, a 23-year veteran of Sony’s CE operations in Europe, on Sept. 1 will replace Glasgow, who'll shift to a new post at Sony America as senior adviser of entrepreneurship and innovation, Sony announced Thursday.
Dell said Tuesday that it stands by its environmental record despite Greenpeace allegations that the company “continues to walk away from its commitment” to eliminate hazardous materials from its products. While all of Apple’s products are now free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic and bromiated flame retardants (BFRs), its main competitor, Dell, “continues to walk back from its public commitment to phase out the use of these two chemical compounds that have been linked with numerous health problems throughout their lifecycles,” Greenpeace said in an e-mail Tuesday. “If Apple can do it, then why can’t Dell? That’s the question Greenpeace has been asking at protests around the world."
SAN FRANCISCO -- Sony’s 3D TVs are better than Panasonic’s or Samsung’s, Sony executives said in a media briefing Wednesday. Though the executives in their spoken remarks avoided mentioning their rivals by name, a flyer they handed out specifically slammed Panasonic and Samsung 3D TVs as inferior to Sony’s on picture stability, brightness and energy efficiency.
Two former Koss Corp. accounting department employees “colluded” with ex-Vice President of Finance Sujata Sachdeva to bilk the company out of $31.5 million over the last five fiscal years, the company said in several SEC filings last week. Koss fired the employees Jan. 4, the same day it terminated Grant Thornton as its outside auditing firm, the filings said.
CE makers and green groups, once vociferous opponents in the CEA lawsuit to stop New York City’s e-waste program from taking effect, vowed to work arm in arm to set up a network of convenient public and private e-waste drop-off locations to serve residents in the city’s five boroughs, now that the lawsuit has been settled and dismissed (CED June 29 p1). In complying with the New York state e-waste measure signed into law May 28, they have acknowledged facing daunting challenges in establishing e-waste collection sites in a city known for its population density and low car ownership, especially in the city’s Manhattan hub.
The New York City Sanitation Department has removed all references to the city’s e-waste program from its website, with May 29’s signing into law of the New York state e-waste program. In an “update,” the agency that had been responsible for carrying out the city e-waste program, said that “this state law supersedes NYC’s Electronics Equipment Collection, Recycling and Reuse Act. Manufacturers are bound by the state law."