Rebecca Day

As Hewlett-Packard braces to lay off 9,000 employees by October as part of a staggered restructuring that will eliminate some 27,000 jobs by the end of 2014, its Personal Systems Group saw “a recovery” in desktop sales and the commercial segment, Chief Financial Officer Catherine Lesjak said on the company’s fiscal Q2 2012 earnings call. PSG revenue was flat year over year as commercial revenue grew 3 percent, and consumer revenue dropped 4 percent, she said. Desktop unit sales were up 5 percent, offset by a 6 percent unit fall in notebook PCs, she said.

Specialty audio retailing “is a business that’s dying,” Tom DeVesto, founder of Tivoli Audio, said at a news conference in New York Wednesday to announce refreshed Tivoli tabletop radios and a new noise-canceling headphone.

Dell’s fiscal Q1 2013 results fell short of expectations on impact from tablets and a competitive notebook environment, Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden said on an earnings call. Notebook sales were down 10 percent year-over-year due to an “aggressive competitive environment” in entry-level segments and emerging markets, Gladden said.

Legrand introduced the lyriQ airQast Main Source module and app for integration with the company’s lyriQ multi-room audio system to allow users to wirelessly control and play their digital music throughout the home from a smartphone or tablet. The app’s jukebox mode enables connected users to select music from other smartphones and tablets that are also on the home network, Fritz Werder, brand general manager of Legrand, told us Tuesday on a press tour in Manhattan. The module and app will be available in August along with the airQast Wi-Fi speaker that allows users to select and play music, adjust volume levels, create playlists, and access streaming audio services through the speaker system from nearly any smartphone or tablet device. An app isn’t available for the Kindle Fire, which Werder called a “closed Android app.” The airQast Wi-Fi speaker, designed for retrofit projects, delivers 40 watts per channel from an analog source, or up to six digital streaming services, Werder said.

Sonos previewed its first subwoofer, a gloss-black design that’s as much a style and technology statement as it is an audio product. The company demoed the Sonos Sub, along with a pair of its Play:5 speakers in Manhattan Saturday, where its products were on display as part of NoHo Design Week. The $699 powered sub will be available June 19 at specialty AV stores, through custom installers, high-end mass retail distribution and from the Sonos website. It won’t likely be sold at Target, which Product Manager Jonathon Reilly said would be Target’s decision, not that of Sonos. The Sonos demo at Target is more for “customer acquisition” and introducing consumers to the concept of multi-room audio, Reilly said. “It’s not for everybody,” he said, “so we're letting our retailers look at where this fits their customer base."

Furniture with built-in cellphone charging capability is one of the long-term visions of the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), and the group has taken a step toward that vision with an under-tabletop transmission method announced last month, Menno Treffers, chairman of WPC, told Consumer Electronics Daily. The consortium said a charger using its Qi specification can deliver 5 watts through a 40-mm tabletop into a Qi receiver using magnetic resonance.

With connected TV penetration now topping 20 percent worldwide, according to Q4 2011 market data, next-gen issues facing TV makers include how users control the connected TV experience, emerging business models for services and how TV owners connect to the Internet, according to a report from NPD DisplaySearch. Many of the technical hurdles of connected TV have been solved, and next phases will focus on consumer behavior -- including how people want to interact with their TVs -- the value of apps and whether consumers are willing to pay for services, DisplaySearch said.

Russound, which has lost some key executives in the past year and last month ended a fickle relationship with Colorado vNet -- a home control company it purchased, put on hold and started up again -- sent a letter to partners Friday promising to “get back to basics.” CEO Charlie Porritt and President Maureen Baldwin said in the letter, which it called the first in a series of communications, that the company is “working to streamline” operations and build on its foundation of “high-performance and feature-packed products that are easy to sell at attractive and profitable price points.”

Beats has opened a Beats by Dr. Dre Lounge in the Delta Sky Club lounge in the new international terminal at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The 800-square-foot space, Beats’ first collaboration with Delta, will allow guests “to relax, recharge, and re-experience their music” through a variety of Beats headphones models, the company told Consumer Electronics Daily. In addition to Beats by Dr. Dre Wireless, Studio and Executive headphones, the space will showcase HP Spectre Ultrabooks, HP TouchSmart PCs and HTC smartphones with access to Beats playlists and an “interactive Beats audio experience,” a company spokesman said. Guests will be able to buy Beats headphones from a Beats concierge, a dedicated Beats trained host who will be in the Beats Lounge during all hours of operation to answer questions, assist guests and manage the space, he said. Beats wanted to engage consumers “in a new, interesting way” and providing travelers the opportunity to experience music was “a natural fit,” he said. The lounge offers the company a way to engage business travelers and “reach new customers,” he said. The Hartsfield lounge is the first Beats by Dr. Dre Lounge, “but there may be opportunities in the future to expand the concept,” he said.

Dolby Labs introduced on Thursday what it called “the next step in audio performance,” a Meridian Audio-based pre-processing filtering process. The upgrade improves the quality of lossless playback on Blu-ray disc, Craig Eggers, Dolby director of content creation and playback, home theater ecosystem, told reporters in an online briefing.