It's a Friday night and I'm sitting here watching a little TV, and doing some light reading. I ran across an article that Jason Knott of Electronic House wrote. In the article he shares some insights from a CEDIA TALK that Julie Jacobson gave to a group of custom integrators.
That led me down the rabbit hole that is my psyche. Since I left the industry and started PRD I'm privy to the unique concerns of custom integrators across the country. One of the many concerns I here is the inability of custom integrators to sell products online due to the shackles of their dealer agreements. Never mind the fact that you can find nearly every product a custom integrator uses on Amazon.
“How do the manufacturers expect custom integrators to compete in the IoT era”?
Potential customers are being bombarded by commercials from Amazon Alexa, Ring, Nest, and they're buying them. Why? Because it's easy, and even the simplest of simpletons can set it up. Potential customers are opting for Sonos Play:1's over Connect:Amps. Xfinity gives away a remote that's IR/RF, includes voice control. Our $500 remotes don't have voice control.
"It's hard to sell quality audio to a person who walks around with earbuds in their ears all day."
I read somewhere that Google sold a Google home every 17 seconds in 2017. Wrap your head around that for a second. The damn thing looks like a Renuzit Air Freshener. The point I'm trying to make here is that people will buy anything if one of the big three makes it. Amazon, Apple, Google.