JVC/Kenwood Merger – Pending a June 27 shareholder meeting, JVC and Kenwood will merge their two electronics companies. The Japanese firms had already merged their car and portable audio divisions last October. Intense competition from southeast Asian manufacturers is one of the reasons for the action. 43% of sales for the new company is expected to come from home and mobile electronics during the coming fiscal year, followed by car electronics at 18%, professional systems at 14% and entertainment business at 9%. The two companies will exchange their old stock for new stock, with JVC receiving two new shares for each old one, and Kenwood receiving one for one.
More Versatile iPod Dock Launched – Last year a tiny firm called Chestnut Hill Sound launched their $500 iPod music system in competition with two of the biggest home audio players, Bose and Boston Acoustics. Founder Steve Krampf analyzed the iPod docks of other companies and decided to improve what he found wrong. Instead of two speakers he uses five – counting the two-way concentric drivers a la KEF. The bass driver on the bottom cannot be a real subwoofer, but it is an improvement on no deeper bass at all. Krampf found that iPod users liked the way their gadget’s scroll wheel allowed them to navigate to songs, albums – whatever they wanted to hear. But on most iPod docks the supplied remote controls only the basic volume, start/stop and forward and back. To navigate thru your tunes you need to walk over to the iPod itself. The Chestnut Hill player – called George in a nod to the Beatles’ producer George Martin – offers a large display screen remote with a twistable knob on the front, which apes all the iPod controls. There is a single tuning system for both FM and AM – no need to switch bands. Plus a USB data connection on the back. And various “skins” for George’s exterior, to fit any decor. George won a “Best in Show” award at the January Macworld in San Francisco. But its many competitors haven’t give up the fight. Cambridge SoundWorks has a system at the same price with a CD and DVD player built in, and Bose – though still not as hefty in the bass end – has a new unit with a rechargeable lithium ion battery, allowing it to play as long as three hours without an AC connection.
