Did you go to the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show?
I didn’t. This response has become familiar among longtime high-fidelity audio colleagues.
Don’t view this as criticism of CES in general.
It’s just that CES no longer offers a significant display of high-fidelity audio
4K & 8K television, common audio partner, is still highlighted at CES.
However, consumer electronics such as AI, smart home tech, smartphones, 5G, Bluetooth devices, digital health, robotics, and bird feeder cameras, have essentially benched high-fidelity audio.
That’s what my audio colleagues are lamenting.
My decades of CES experience offer an additional explanation of colleague feedback.
From the late 1970s through the early 2000s, our holiday sales season peaked in an adrenaline Christmas rush that cleared by New Year’s Day.
We headed to the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show the following week.
Small business brick-and-mortar retailers arrived by the thousands, prepared to recharge their batteries, investigate new products, and meet with colleagues.
Billboards from the Las Vegas airport to our hotels shouted audio and video.
Demand for home music and movie entertainment drove consumer electronics.
It was a fun and exhausting four-day whirlwind of exciting new product demos, quick hot-dog lunches, Las Vegas shows, and fine dining.
We returned from Las Vegas to our brick-and-mortar retail floors pumped to offer and demonstrate new products.
But those days have passed.
Which more clearly interprets colleague comments.
But how does this explain the demise of high-fidelity audio’s presence?
Has the interest in music declined?
The music once created a large demand for high-fidelity audio.
The success of music-streaming smartphone-connected earbuds is evidence that the demand for music is still high. But, Bluetooth-connected consumers are not buying high-fidelity audio systems.
CES offers a demographic view that may explain why.
High-income-oriented products such as smart home custom-installed tech are plentiful.
Lower-income, lower-fidelity Bluetooth-type audio is prominently displayed.
But middle-income high-fidelity audio is absent.
Does this affirm a shrinking middle-income America that can no longer afford high-fidelity audio?
High-fidelity audio sales aside,
if yes, let’s hope for our country’s future that middle-income America makes a comeback.
That’s it
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