Eclipse Bows TD Series Home Audio Systems In U.S. Market

Eclipse is best-known in the U.S. for its aftermarket mobile electronics, but it exited that category in the market about two to three years ago, it said. The company continues to make aftermarket products overseas and still does a significant business globally in OEM mobile electronics, it said. Eclipse didn’t say why it left the U.S. aftermarket mobile electronics sector, but the category has been struggling for years.

Eclipse already entered the home audio market overseas in 2009, said Hideto Watanabe, senior manager. Its “flagship” speaker, the TD712zMK2, was already introduced in the other markets, and will ship in the U.S. next month at $10,600, he said. The speaker is part of a product line that uses TimeDomain theory technologies, developed by TimeDomain President Hiroyuki Yoshii. His company claims to reproduce CD audio in a way that sounds to listeners exactly as it sounded when recorded, according to its website. Eclipse’s speakers “achieve the most accurate reproduction of air movement,” the manufacturer claimed in a product manual it gave out at CES. The “internal standing and diffraction waves generated at the front baffle edges” of its speakers are “largely eliminated by adopting a rigid yet tactile egg-shaped” design in which “no two radial surfaces are in the same plane,” it said. The speakers also feature a floating construction that decouples vibrations created by the driver, said Hiroshi Kowaki, project general manager-TD Project. The speakers were optimized to provide better clarity, space reproduction and accurate rhythm reproduction, he said.

Eclipse also introduced three new products at CES that will ship globally next month, it said. The TD-M1 wireless speaker system is expected to cost $1,300 and has a built-in digital amp, an ultra-low distortion non-oversampling DA converter, AirPlay compatibility, a dedicated iPhone app for remote control, and one-touch speaker angle adjustment. Also new are the $6,400 TD725SWMK2 and $3,600 TD520SW subwoofers that feature digital power amps, a low-pass filter bypass function and IR remote controls. The subwoofers improve upon Eclipse’s prior TD725SW in “all aspects,” it said in a news release. The improvements were made “from performance to functionality and design,” it said. The lower-cost model was made in response to “market demand,” it said.

The Eclipse speakers and subwoofers are targeted at hi-fi enthusiasts and audiophiles “who really love” to hear “natural” sound and have a lot of disposable income, said Kowaki. The TD-M1 is also being targeted at female consumers who don’t want large components and are looking for easy speaker operation via an iPhone app, he said. Initially, the TD product line will be sold in the U.S. via distributor On a Higher Note, which was in talks with about 30 retailers for the launch, he said. It was too soon to name any of the dealers, he said.

China’s DXG, meanwhile, is best-known for its low-cost cameras and camcorders, but it exited the camera market a few years ago due to rampant price compression and last year narrowed its focus to IronX-branded action sports camcorders, a category that was new for it in 2013 (CED Jan 10/13 p3). Action cams are “one of the few things” that are growing in sales in the digital imaging sector, Paul Goldberg, DXG N.A. senior vice president-sale and marketing, told Consumer Electronics Daily at CES last week.

But focusing on only one product category in 2013 was “horrible,” said Goldberg. “You've got to find other things to do” as a manufacturer, in part because retailers want to support vendors that offer multiple product options, he said. DXG “spent the past two years figuring out what we wanted to do,” and is now “being reborn,” he said. That rebirth is being helped by its entrance into two new product categories for 2014: See.ing SmartCam video monitoring cameras with cloud storage service and IronX Link-branded fitness tracker watches. DXG had shown lines of LED pico projectors, audio docking systems for smartphones, and IP video cameras -- all new product categories for the company -- at CES in 2012 (CED Jan 20/12 p7). But it scrapped those plans, opting to instead focus only on action cams last year.

Rivals including Belkin and Netgear offer similar video monitoring cameras, said Goldberg, but DXG products will offer low pricing and unique features. Most of the competing products, for example, don’t offer the pan, tilt and zoom features in the same price range that the DXG line offers, he said. DXG will ship the DVW105, DVW109, DVW111 and DVW112 at $99.99 late this month, each offering similar features in different design configurations. All feature 720p recording, 10x digital zoom, Wi-Fi and two-way audio. The DVW105 and DVW109 each feature 128-degree wide angle viewing capability and infrared LED for night vision, while the other two models feature 61-degree angle viewing and direction adjustable bases. The $129.99 DVW110, also shipping in late January, adds motion detection, real-time push notification, 360-degree panning and 90-degree tilting, said DXG.

DXG’s initial IronX Link fitness tracker watch, the DSW001, will ship in March at $99.99 and a DSW005 fitness tracker wristband will follow in June at $129.99, said Goldberg. The products will monitor users’ activities 24 hours a day and track the number of walking steps they take, walking distance, calories burned and intensity level, the company said. Extended applications offered via the cloud will include diet recording, a weight-loss assistant, sleep assistant and health diary, it said. A DXG health management app will launch in March that it said will be compatible with iOS, Android and Windows devices.

DXG isn’t promoting the DSW001 as a “smartwatch” because the device is focused on only fitness functionality, said Goldberg. But the smartwatch category is “something that we're looking at very closely right now,” he said. By mid-2014, it may have an initial product in that category, he said. DXG is “just starting” to take the fitness tracker line around to retailers, so it’s too soon to say what dealers will carry them, he said. A “major differentiator” that sets DXG’s fitness trackers apart from rival devices is that the sleep monitoring capabilities on its offerings provide a “lot more depth” than competing products, he said.

DXG “did very well” with its initial IronX action cam last year, said Goldberg. The 2014 action cam line shipping now includes the entry-level, $179.99 DXG5G9 that offers 1080p at 30 frames per second and 720p at 60 fps, the $199.99 DXG5G9 bundled with an RCWD01 remote control video watch (also being sold separately at $79.99), $249.99 DXGD01 with 1080p at 60 fps and 720p at 120 fps and $299.99 DXGD01 that adds a bundled RCWD02 remote control watch (also to be sold separately, in June at $79.99).

Nyko is expanding into the non-gaming mobile accessory market this spring with the $39.99 Power Base charging device that it said is compatible with the Galaxy S4, Nexus 5 and other smartphones that are compatible with Qi inductive charging technology. Qi is an interface standard developed by the Wireless Power Consortium that enables a device to be charged just by placing it on top of a power transmission pad that charges the device via electromagnetic induction. The Power Base includes the Qi charging adaptor that Nyko said is required for the Galaxy S4. Support for the Nexus 5 is already built-in with no additional hardware required, it said.

The expansion into the mobile sector is a logical extension for Nyko, which has already offered accessories for mobile gaming devices, it said. The company is “reaching out to existing retailers” for the Power Base, Chris Arbogast, director-marketing, told us. But Nyko is also looking to “new avenues” for retail distribution with the product, he said. Nyko showed it to retailers for the first time at CES, he said.

Nyko tried induction charging before, with a Wii charge base, said Arbogast. “We thought it was going to be hot” at the time, but the technology was more expensive and less efficient then than it is now, he said. Wii consumers “gravitated” to the cheaper alternatives then, as consumers “voted with their wallet,” he said. There was no Qi standard then, but even with it now, the cost is higher for products that use it, he said. There’s been more demand for the induction technology in the mobile sector than the gaming space in general, he said. He predicted that in the next five years most mobile devices will have the Qi technology built in and no longer require an adapter card.

Rydeen Mobile Electronics announced just before CES that it will ship a $699 multimedia receiver that works with Android devices (CED Dec 30 p6). The double-DIN DV638A Android-powered source unit marks the company’s entry into the 12-volt receiver category after focusing on cameras and other parking safety devices for vehicles, said President Phil Maeda. Rydeen will offer additional receivers, but intends to keep its focus on parking safety devices rather than the declining aftermarket head unit market, he told us. It will introduce a version of the receiver to support the updated Android operating system later this year, he said. That will be offered at the same price and replace the model shown at CES last week, he said. Rydeen will offer a line of 2-3 receivers, all of them similar but with slight feature variations, he said.

Entering the receiver category will give Rydeen more “leverage” to enter the traditional 12-volt retail channel to sell its full line of products, said Maeda. Rydeen has become “quite well known in the expediter” distribution market that services car dealers since the company was started about five years ago, he said. While it’s been able to get distribution at the Al & Ed’s Autosound chain in California, it now wants wider distribution at traditional 12-volt dealers like that and it sees the addition of receivers as a helpful product category to achieve that, said Maeda. Many traditional 12-volt dealers don’t sell parking safety devices, possibly because many consumers don’t think about the rearview mirror even being a device that can be exchanged to a superior product, he said.

One reason the aftermarket head unit market has continued to decline is that it’s become increasingly expensive and more difficult to install them in vehicles as the factory trim around them has become larger, said Maeda. “This trend is getting more and more extreme,” he said. At the same time, the rearview mirror safety business has been “steadily growing,” he said. The privately held Rydeen’s profit and revenue grew in 2013 from 2012, with sales growing more than 50 percent, he said.