Managing Expectations: The Bluetooth LE Audio Calendar

Fear of Missing Out on Bluetooth LE Audio? Are We There Yet? How many more days? When should you trigger that OTA firmware update? Should you ship Auracast-enabled products now? Should you be the first? No one wants to be the first.

As anticipated, Bang & Olufsen unveiled a new collection with motorsport pioneers Ferrari. The collection champions Bang & Olufsen's excellence in aluminum material and celebrates the two brands' shared passion for poise, power, and precision by reimagining a series of headphones and speakers: the Beosound 2 home speaker, Beoplay H95 headphones, Beoplay EX earphones and the portable speaker Beosound Explore. All are red and features the Ferrari brand signature.

—Audio-Technica confirmed that is now selling the new ATH-M50xMO Professional Monitor Headphones, a limited-edition "“Lantern Glow"” version of the popular ATH-M50x featuring a metallic orange finish with black and silver accents. This model is the result of a global crowdsourcing campaign, where participants voted on their favorite color to be chosen for a new ATH-M50x model. Or maybe it was just the competition voting for fun...

As it was announced during Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference back in June 2020, among all the spectacular updates to all the company's operating systems (iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 7, and tvOS 14), Apple discussed a new firmware update that would add spatial audio support for the company's AirPods Pro. Well, a few days ago, Apple did release the promised firmware update and suddenly, the spatial audio support in the AirPods Pro was a reality. And what an update! As everyone realized soon enough, the results are simply spectacular and very noticeable while watching movies with good soundtracks.

There's so much an audio brand can do in terms of effective promotion (that all important "P" in the marketing mix). And it all starts with the humble but mighty press release. It is amazing how so many "grown-up" people in the audio industry - including many consumer audio, and almost all high-end audio and hi-fi companies - completely ignore what a press release is about, what it is used for, or simply disregard the fact that when they actually "release" a new product, they need to tell the press, which will help tell the world about it.

I learned to attend trade shows in the era when it was crucial to bring back a large bag weighing 80 pounds filled with catalogs, price lists, and product manuals. In fact, I quickly learned to look at the global trade show calendar and sometimes attended regional trade shows just to find new products ahead of the major international events and establish an early relationship with a new company. Those local shows were mainly targeted at meeting final clients and end users for the region, but they were an effective way to meet key people with more time available, and learn how they defined their sales pitch in their own - sometimes more mature - markets.

QSC announced that Christophe Anet has been appointed Product Marketing Manager for the company’s Live Sound Division. In his new role, Anet will be responsible for the creation, presentation, curation, and refinement of product marketing content for the company’s diverse portfolio of live sound products and solutions.