The CEO is out – thoughts on future product direction

[NQVHNWI]

Yes….it competes with other Brands. It does not get laughed out of the park in the price point it is in.

The Beolab 8 I think competes with integrated speakers at that price point.

1. Good clean-looking speakers, no gimmicks
2. Integrated All-Digital Amp (no need for Amp or cable matching)
3. Integrated DSP Unit (no need for Dirac box)
4. Integrated Streamer (no need for Wiim or Eversolo or Bluenote box)
5. Integrated Pre-Amp (The Speaker switches between source and controls volume well albeit not as well as the Big Beolabs)
6. An App that (now) works.

So the product sans gimmicks is a good one. With the bass driver, the BL28 would make a compelling case at its price point (less a few grand) without the gimmick. Marketed well to those who would be embarrassed to own B&O and you create a sale outlet you have not had for a long time. It is reasonably WAF acceptable made of clean-looking non-bulky design……on and on and on.

I think many Beofans have to understand times are always changing and fancy mechanisms add a lot of visial, a lot of price and in many ways, take away some credibility of the product AT THE PRICE POINT IT IS AT

 

 

[speedsixdave]

sorenfelden wrote:

I guess they highlight why running B&O is very difficult as there are so many different opinions on what the “fix” should be. For me, it is a whole new product range with a design language away from organic forms – for you, it’s something completely different.

Ask a friend, get advice. Ask two friends, get conflicting advice.

I’d like to see a bit more well-designed modular hifi, at more reasonable prices. I don’t believe that premium for premium’s sake is a good business model for either the company or for consumers. When you look at what WiiM can offer for £350 or indeed what Ikea can offer for £80, it does make B&O’s offerings seem very hard to justify. And I realise it’s sacrilegious to compare a £90 WiiM Mini to a £1000 Beoconnect Core but essentially they are the same device with an order-of-magnitude price difference, and nobody’s buying the Core for its exemplary industrial design, they’re buying it because they’re locked into a ‘premium’ ecosystem. Same really for Ikea’s quite good-looking new Solskydd speakers (£29/£50/£80). Obviously they’re not going to sound as good as an A9 (£2800) but the design is pretty attractive and you could have 35(!) of the big ones for the price of an A9.

You might say that there is no overlap between the potential customers of Ikea/Wiim with the potential customers of B&O but I am precisely that customer and I suspect I’m not alone. We’re building an extension at the moment, and I have budget for a Shape if I can justify it to myself and the wife. But the £6k or so is a huge amount of real money. I do love B&O’s industrial design (primarily) and sound quality (secondarily), but there are lot of alternative options for £6k from vintage to modern, and a lot of Other Things to spend £6k on. If four Ikea Solskydds do effectively the same job as one Shape, then the remaining £5680 buys a lot of compromise.

The wider point here beyond my exemplum rant is that I suspect most customers buy B&O for the design primarily and the sound secondarily. There have always been lots of other options at all price points for sound quality, but far fewer for good, stylish, living-room-friendly design. That is less true now, with other companies from Ikea to Ruark realising this is a market space they can exploit. The unique B&O multiroom advantage has also gone, eaten by WiiM, Sonos, Airplay and others. So I can partially understand that decision to target VHNWIs, but I think it’s the wrong one. Do good design with decent sound at an acceptable price point, and people will buy your product. Everything in life is a compromise.

 

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[355f]

Interesting; to extrapolate, why buy a Rolex when something 1/8 price does the same job and is as stylish.

In fact using this thought process, there would be no premium brands in any product

[speedsixdave]

A Rolex is an interesting comparison – an outdated technology that no-one buys for its superior functionality in the 21st century. A beautiful and intricate item that some adore and some see little point in, owned and used primarily as a status symbol. Is that how we feel about B&O?

One positive about luxury watch ownership is that they might be a reasonable investment and be worth more in fifty years’ time than they are now. Rarely true of consumer electronics although if you’d bought a crate of Beogram 4000s in the 1970s and stored them well you might be on to something!

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[speedsixdave]

355f wrote:

In fact using this thought process, there would be no premium brands in any product

I’m not averse to that. Good design and good functionality at a fair price please, which is not to reject the idea of a higher-quality product at a higher price. I’m pretty much with William Morris on this, though who knows what he would have made of a Beoconnect Core. The problem arises when one is being asked to pay lots of additional money just because a product says Louis Vuitton on it, or whatever. A posh name does not make a thing quality.

 

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[Stan]

To be fair to the Beoconnect Core, it does include some more advanced signal processing for certain B&O speakers. They’ve hidden this information because that’s what B&O does, but it’s not quite a WiiM equivalent. Is it worth the 3-4x price, that’s up to you (it wasn’t to my son) .

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 1 day ago by Stan.

[NQVHNWI]

speedsixdave wrote:

A Rolex is an interesting comparison – an outdated technology that no-one buys for its superior functionality in the 21st century. A beautiful and intricate item that some adore and some see little point in, owned and used primarily as a status symbol. Is that how we feel about B&O?

One positive about luxury watch ownership is that they might be a reasonable investment and be worth more in fifty years’ time than they are now. Rarely true of consumer electronics although if you’d bought a crate of Beogram 4000s in the 1970s and stored them well you might be on to something!

 

Interesting comparison. And to the point of the thread.

Look at Rolex as a luxury status symbol. They have more customers/wannabe customers (or until recently) than they have watches for. ADs could charge premiums (either internally purchasing the watches at Rolex’s pre-set price and reselling them to grey Dealers at often 50% or 100% margin) or they could simply tell the Customer to buy $20-50ks worth of Jewellery etc…now, and they would find themselves very near the top of the mythical “5 year wait-list” in 3-6 months time.

Omega on the other hand (and is perhaps more luxurious and definately more technologically advanced than Rolex) thought they could bypass ADs (who rather then selling them at a premium HAD to DISCOUNT to shift the watches) and open-up disastrously under-performing luxury boutiques (who never discount btw).

So there is a magic “something” which makes a product “luxurious” and desirable, in demand and technologically acceptable……..one can simply not just raise prices in their swanky uniform mono-brand stores until only the very wealthy can afford it and make think it will be better than the competition either in quality or technological advantage or in the looseness of terms “as an investment”.

 

 

 

[dueno]

are you sure of that.

which speaker?

My B&O Icons:

[Stan]

@dueno. I saw someone post this a while back, and I was skeptical so I looked it up and found something. Now, I look and all I find is Beosonic… which is something. It also does the equalization for the Shape. I will have to find that older post. Maybe it can lead me back to what I found before.

[Millemis]

Sorry…….but are you sure, that you are in the right thread 🤔

MM

Location: Flensborg————Danmark

[speedsixdave]

They are, and it’s my fault for heading off-thread by doubting the abilities of the Beoconnect Core. Stan defended it, dueno requested more information. But a diversion from this interesting topic, for which I apologise.

Location: UK

Favourite Product: Beolab 3000

My B&O Icons:

[Jay Chan]

Great thoughts.

for me, it is simple. I do not care about the price, as long as the quality is right.
I own at least 6000 CD‘s (physical), while I enjoy streaming Qobuz. Sell me a system that integrates everything – I cannot be the only one left with physical music? Why is there nothing from B&O, when I fondly remember my Overture??!

would not mind if TCL put in an offer to buy the brand, as of today, they plan to take over Sony‘s TV and Music business, and they need some extraordinary design.

 

[Severed_hand_of_skywalker]

“”including designing the products, manufacturing them, and even handling the shipping and customer service.”
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1768912998

Sony’s TV designs are dead.  I for sure never want a Chinese brand to touch B&O as I never relate that countries products to design or quality.

Location: Toronto, Canada

[Jay Chan]

Well we will have Sony keep 49 % share of the joint venture (if it goes through, mind you, we think about April 2027), so don’t worry. Be happy, it was the last lifeline for that business….. TV is tough

But I agree, for the design it would be great to use B&O input, but can they still deliver? Latest design of soundbars tells me no. Let‘s see!

[Author]

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