Rebecca Day

Between what industry observers have called a sluggish back-to-school selling season and the crucial upcoming holiday season, Target is holding its “biggest electronics event of the year,” the company said in an email blast to customers Wednesday. The sale runs through Saturday, it said.

In pondering a new TV purchase, U.S. consumers want Wi-Fi, better sound quality, built-in tuners and embedded storage, but they have little interest in 3D, voice activation or gesture control, Tamaryn Pratt, president of Quixel Research, told the Home Technology Specialists of America conference Tuesday. Quixel surveyed 1,169 adult TV owners in June and July and found 73 percent of respondents would be extremely interested in Wi-Fi connectivity, followed by 68 percent showing similar interest in built-in tuners, 61 percent for an ultra-HD picture such as 4K, and 58 percent for a built-in DVR. Half of respondents showed strong interest in syncing content from devices to TVs and 44 percent indicated strong interest in using a tablet or smartphone as their remote control. Among the features with the least appeal to consumers, with roughly a third of users indicating strong interest, were 3D, gesture control and voice activation. At the bottom of the list, 18 percent of respondents showed strong interest in a battery-powered portable TV, Pratt said. In the survey, Quixel found that Apple users showed a higher rate of feature preference than non-Apple owners. Almost 700 respondents were Apple users. Half of Apple users were extremely interested in using their iPhone or iPad to control their TV, compared with 44 percent of non-Apple users. On cord cutting, Quixel found that cable-cutting is not generally occurring among young people. Older cable customers with lower income, however, reported decreasing their level of content from a cable or satellite provider roughly twice as much as the rest of the population, Pratt said. Mid- and premium-level customers had increased their subscriptions to a small degree, she said.

CHICAGO -- McIntosh Lab’s acquisition by Milan-based Fine Sounds was hailed as a positive move for the Binghamton, N.Y.-based high-end audio company Monday by dealers attending the Home Technology Specialists of America (HTSA) meeting. Milan, Italy-based Fine Sounds, which owns brands with similar stature in the audiophile community including Sonus Faber, Audio Research, Wadia Digital and Sumiko, said Monday it had bought 63-year-old McIntosh from Bain Capital-owned D+M Group. D+M acquired McIntosh in 2003 from Clarion, which owned McIntosh for three years after the death of McIntosh co-founder Gordon Gow in 1990. Bain acquired D+M in 2008. The companies didn’t disclose terms of the agreement.

Samsung previewed an Android-based Galaxy digital camera with app capability at AT&T’s Fall Preview event in New York Thursday night. The 16-megapixel camera, packing a 4.8-inch LCD TFT display, lets users play games such as Angry Birds or download apps to the camera over 4G or Wi-Fi, said Shoneel Kolhatkar, director of product planning and strategy for Samsung Telecommunications.

The National Mining Association put a faster permitting process for rare earth minerals mining at the top of its mission-critical list, NMA spokeswoman Carol Raulston told us Friday. That day was the first annual Manufacturing Day, co-sponsored by NMA. “On the mineral side, we're the beginning of the supply chain for so many products manufactured in the U.S.,” the spokeswoman said, “but because of an inefficient permitting system in this country it takes three to four times longer to get a permit here than it does in Canada or Australia or other countries around the world."

Bang & Olufsen unveiled the latest addition to its Play product line Wednesday, a saucer-shaped single-enclosure stereo music system with AirPlay that the company hopes to sell in high-end furniture, kitchen and lifestyle stores. Bang & Olufsen launched the $2,699.99 system at the posh Trump SoHo hotel in Manhattan, where guest rooms are outfitted with BeoSystem TVs and motorized drape systems. The 480-watt circular sound system -- 2.3 feet in diameter -- packs two 3/4-inch tweeters and a pair of 3-inch midrange drivers, each powered by an integrated 80-watt Class D amplifier. The 8-inch bass-reflex bass unit, with a 160-watt amp, was designed into a convex section of the enclosure, the company said. The BeoPlay A9 will sell through Bang & Olufsen and select Apple stores when it ships in late November, Zean Nielsen, Bang & Olufsen America president, told us. The company is also targeting lifestyle stores such as Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s, hoping to appeal to customers it wouldn’t typically reach, Nielsen said. Nielsen said since the launch of the Play line, which debuted at CES in January, 60 percent of B&O’s new customers have come in through the fledgling product series, which also includes a portable powered speaker system, iPad speaker frame and shelf-mounted music system. Bang & Olufsen is “not necessarily” looking to display the new A9 system “next to a bunch of electronics,” said Nielsen, saying the company is also looking at selling through electronics retailers but “it’s not our primary focus.” The “trick” feature inside the A9, the industrial design statement B&O is known for integrating into most of its products, is a touch-controlled volume up/down wheel that traces the outline of the circular frame of the system. Users turn up and down volume and pause the music by sliding or tapping a finger along a path of raised dots on the top rear side of the enclosure. The wireless A9 system streams music using DLNA or AirPlay, relying on the smartphone or tablet used as the source device for control of tracks, station or playlist selection. Customers have a choice of grille fabric color: black, white, red, silver green and brown, and the three supporting wooden legs are available in oak, beech or teak, executives said. Rear-panel connections include mini audio, USB and Ethernet jacks, the company said.

IHS slashed its 2012 forecast for global Ultrabook shipments due to high pricing and a “lack of effective marketing” to lure consumers away from other hot-selling mobile devices, the market research firm said Monday. Initial projections for global Ultrabook sales in 2012 were 22 million units, and IHS has more than halved that forecast to 10.3 million units, it said, with most shipments for the year expected to come in Q4.

E-reader price jockeying for the holiday season got a head start Sunday with Barnes & Noble’s announcement it had cut the price of the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight by $20, bringing it to $119 to match the suggested retail price of Amazon’s new Kindle Paperwhite e-reader with ad support. Analysts saw the move as an attempt by Barnes & Noble to win over consumers on the merits of the GlowLight-equipped Nook that has been very well-received by reviewers since its launch last spring. In the news release announcing the price cut, Barnes & Noble noted that the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight comes ad-free and bundled with an AC adapter, compared with the Kindle Paperwhite, which comes with a USB charger and shows ads when the user isn’t reading. The Paperwhite without advertising is priced $139, according to Amazon.com. Barnes & Noble’s release also said the Simple Touch with GlowLight “is fully stocked at Barnes & Noble stores and leading retailers,” a claim Barnes & Noble couldn’t make in the early days following the GlowLight’s release, when the e-reader suffered product shortages during the entire fiscal first quarter that ended July 28 due to poor production yields (CED Aug 22 p3).

Coinstar will begin testing alternative uses for Redbox kiosks later this year to “leverage the brand in entertainment, value, convenience and simplicity,” Chief Financial Officer Scott Di Valerio said last week at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York. In response to an analyst’s question about how Coinstar will maximize the company’s capital investment in installed kiosks in the face of a projected decline in DVD rentals, Di Valerio said, “We're not sitting back on our hands around that business.” About 18 months ago, Coinstar put into place a “small team that’s focused on coming up with new products” that will “extend the brand of Redbox and extend the life of kiosks,” he said.

Following the iPhone 5 announcement last week, some AirPlay-equipped audio systems launched, including two wireless music systems from B&W that debuted Thursday. The A7 ($799.99) and A5 ($499.99), both due in October, joined the $599.99 Zeppelin Air, B&W’s first AirPlay-compatible system, which hit the market last year. The A7 packs 24 bit/96 kHz digital audio converters and a 6-inch dedicated bass driver. The smaller A5 offers wireless streaming via AirPlay along with an iPod/iPhone dock with a 30-pin connector, the company said.