A home appliance, also referred to as a domestic appliance, an electric appliance or a household appliance, is a machine which assists in household functions such as cooking, cleaning and food preservation.
Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usually referred to as black goods due to many products being housed in black or dark casings. This term is used to distinguish them from "white goods" which are meant for housekeeping tasks, such as washing machines and refrigerators, although nowadays, these would be considered black goods, some of these being connected to the Internet. In British English, they are often called brown goods by producers and sellers. In the 2010s, this distinction is absent in large big box consumer electronics stores, which sell entertainment, communication and home office devices, light fixtures and appliances, including the bathroom type.
The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) is a standard and trade organization representing 1,376 consumer technology companies in the United States. CTA works to influence public policy, holds events such as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and CES Asia, conducts market research, and helps its members and regulators implement technical standards. CTA is led by president and CEO Gary J. Shapiro.
CES is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typically hosts presentations of new products and technologies in the consumer electronics industry.
Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebranded under its current name with an emphasis on consumer electronics in 1983.
LG Electronics Inc. is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest chaebol in South Korea, and often considered as the pinnacle of LG Corp with the group's chemical and battery division LG Chem. It comprises four business units: home entertainment, mobile communications, home appliances & air solutions, and vehicle components. LG Electronics acquired Zenith in 1995 and the largest shareholder of LG Display, world's largest display company by revenue in 2020. LG Electronics is also the world's second largest TV manufacturer behind Samsung Electronics. The company has 128 operations worldwide, employing 83,000 people.
Portable Media Center (PMC) is a portable media player (PMP) platform developed by Microsoft. Announced at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and released in early 2004, it was originally positioned as a competitor to Apple's iPod. All its hard drive-based players use a graphical user interface (GUI) modeled after Media Center, a software portal bundled with Windows XP Media Center Edition. Manufacturers of PMC devices included Creative, Philips, iriver, Samsung, and Toshiba.
White-Westinghouse is an American home appliance brand used under license by trademark owner Westinghouse Licensing Corporation. It was created in 1975 when White Consolidated Industries bought the Westinghouse Electric Corporation's major appliance business. White Consolidated Industries was in turn acquired by Electrolux in 1986.
Kenwood is a Japanese brand of consumer electronics. It has been owned by JVCKenwood ever since October 2011, when Kenwood Corporation merged with JVC. Kenwood manufactures audio equipment such as cassette tape decks/recorders, amateur radio (ham) equipment, radios, cellular phones, speakers, and other consumer electronics.
The Japanese electronics industry is one of the largest in the world, though the share of Japanese electronics companies has significantly declined from its peak due to competition from South Korea, Taiwan, China, and the United States.
The NPD Group, Inc. is an American market research company founded on September 28, 1966, and based in Port Washington, New York. In 2017, NPD ranked as the 8th largest market research company in the world, according to the independent AMA Gold Report Top 50 report. The NPD Group operates in 20 countries, across more than 20 industries.
Hisense Group is a Chinese multinational major appliance and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China. Televisions are the main products of Hisense, and it is the largest TV manufacturer in China by market share since 2004. Hisense is also an OEM, so some of its products are sold to other companies and carry brand names not related to Hisense.
Philips Consumer Lifestyle is a subsidiary of the Dutch multinational electronics company Philips which produces consumer electronics and small appliances. It is the only Philips company headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The Americas division is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut.
Home Media Magazine was a trade publication that covered various aspects of the home entertainment industry, most notably home video distribution via VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and digital copy. The magazine also covered news relating to consumer electronics, video games, home video distributors and various forms of digital distribution of movie and TV content.
Gary J. Shapiro is an acclaimed author, lobbyist, and the president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association which represents over 1500 consumer technology companies and owns and produces the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Shapiro is the author of the bestselling books Ninja Future: Secrets to Success in the New World of Innovation, Ninja Innovation: The Ten Killer Strategies of the World’s Most Successful Businesses and The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream. Through these books, media interviews, and opinion pieces in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post, Shapiro explains the economic importance of innovation. He is considered an “influencer" on LinkedIn, and is a speaker at conferences including DLD, Milken, The Next Web and SXSW.
PassAlong Networks, also known as Tennessee Pacific Group, LLC, was a developer of digital media innovations and services located in Franklin, Tennessee. The company had a digital music library of three million licensed songs, two million of which were raw MP3 music files, and provided a series of products and services in the digital media marketplace.
Sigma Designs was an American public corporation that designed and built high-performance system-on-a-chip semiconductor technologies for Internet-based set-top boxes, DVD players/recorders, high-definition televisions, media processors, digital media adapters, portable media players and home connectivity products. In addition to platform processing and home network hardware, Sigma Designs also offered engineering support services and customized integrated circuit development.
Audio Advice, Inc. is a specialty consumer electronics retailer in the United States, specializing in home and portable audio, home theater, and smart home technology. Audio Advice operates as both a retailer and custom systems installer/integrator with branches in Raleigh, North Carolina and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Kenmore is an American brand of household appliances owned and licensed by Transformco, an affiliate of ESL Investments.
Electronic Express is an American family owned and operated business established in 1983 and headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. It is the largest independent consumer electronics and major appliances retailer in Tennessee. Electronic Express operates 20 stores in Tennessee and Alabama, and in 1999 began online sales.
