A few weeks ago I tweeted about how I'd had a nice dinner meeting with Raymarine and that they had all sorts of interesting product news that I couldn't write about yet. But, dang, they didn't even mention that they were in acquisition mode, let alone that they were quite close to sealing the deal to buy Tacktick announced earlier today. This move has to feel good for the Ray folks who were around during the hard times before FLIR bought the company, and also for the innovators who created Tacktick's neat wireless instrument systems and struggled against much larger marine electronics manufacturers -- like Raymarine -- before joining Suunto, which didn't appear to make much sense in terms of product integration...
It's great that the NMEA's magazine Marine Electronics Journal is available online these days, but I screen captured that two page spread above for reasons that may not please the organization. The "NMEA 2000, Doing it right" cover story of that May/June issue is a series of interviews with several dealer/installers, and while it's pleasing to hear that the Standard is really happening -- it's part of most new installs, and seen as a good thing for all parties -- I found the interviewer's emphasis on avoiding non-certified N2K products a bit odd. And in the "Tech Update" seen above, my friend and NMEA Technical Director Steve Spitzer doubles down on this theme, which -- sorry, Steve -- deserves some debate, I think...
Last week in San Francisco, Russell Coutts probably did the America's Cup racing program a great service when he not only capsized an AC 45, but personally took a dramatic header right through its wing sail, all before a fleet of press boats! You want to see the video. Heck, Charlie Doane admits to watching the crash "about fifty times" and looking forward to more. I like a shot of NASCAR in my sailboat racing, too, but I'll bet that an equally important element in making this sport more popular will be the broadcast TV wizardry being spearheaded by the remarkable Stan Honey...
The MTA 2011 Survey is still underway. In fact, we could really use more responses. Yes, we're running it a bit later this year, and boating season has begun for many, but remember the goal of helping marine electronics manufacturers and distributors to better understand what we want and how we buy stuff. Your response, for instance, might help to confirm or modify the following MTA analysis of which sources are on the rise, and which aren't...
As I hope you know, the 2011 MTA marine electronics survey is underway right now, but what follows is another in a series of entries derived from the original 2010 data. As usual, I'm a bit amazed at what the MTA guys can slice and dice out of our opinions. Frankly, market intelligence is more mysterious to me than all the wires on Gizmo, but I do understand how this could help the industry serve us better. So please take the 2011 survey, and here's MTA....
The MTA Spring 2011 Survey is ready for your input. One of several sections I'll be quite interested in is the one where respondents write in the marine electronics brands that have exceeded or fallen below their expectations. As discussed last April, the results indicate both brand recognition and perception, and I wonder if we'll see any significant changes. The poll is very similar to last year's, taking about twenty minutes and earning either Doctors Without Borders or Internews (your choice) one dollar. The major reward, though, is the chance to let the industry know what you want. The MTA 2011 Survey awaits.
Marine Technology Advisors is really taking shape. You'll find a new web site at that link, and better yet, the firm tells me that it's getting some attention from marine electronics manufacturers and distributors. The following entry, like the ones in April, is based on last year's survey, specifically where "integration" fit in when marine electronics buyers were asked to rank its importance versus other criteria like pricing, reliability, performance, and feature sets. Nearly 1,000 of you took the survey last year -- which established some good base numbers -- and starting tomorrow the 2011 survey will begin. Please come around whether you filled in the original or want to add your two cents.
I sometimes wonder how the smaller marine electronics manufacturers will get along as more and more boaters seem to go with systems centered on do-it-all MFDs from the Big Four brands. So it's good to read on the Si-Tex home page that the company turned a profit in its first year under new management. The trick seems to be filling niches that the big boys have largely abandoned, like the new standalone SDD-110 Digital Depth Gauge above, which will drop right into the hole left by a venerable Datamarine Offshore Sounder and only retails for $349, excluding an 'inexpensive' transducer...
Last week Marine Technology Advisors (MTA) began publishing more results of the 2010 survey. This is the second installment: Among a long list of market characteristics MTA tested for - and will be testing again - was the current rate of installation for more than 60 technical segments. We asked survey respondents to cite their current position with these marine technologies in one of the four states diagrammed below. What we found was a electronics market with a broad range of market development maturity across more than 60 technical segments. Can buyers and suppliers enhance their relationship(s) by thinking about their solutions from this perspective? Can users and suppliers of materially different technical solutions benefit from common market development strategies? We think so...
In February, 2010, I wrote about how the little marine electronics industry could use some market intelligence -- often called MI -- and welcomed a startup firm called Marine Technology Advisors. MTA created a fairly dense survey and during the period when nearly 1,000 Panbo readers participated in it, we got to see who some our favorite sources are and what we were thinking about buying. Then, as MTA sliced and diced the complete data set, we got a peek at Panbo demographics on the site's fifth birthday and what I thought was some very interesting analysis of brand recognition and perception. Meanwhile, MTA was at work behind the scenes trying to market their analysis to the trade, and I understand they got some good nibbles...
