Sony and Best Buy coordinate on S-AIR wireless audio

Sony released a story today about their invigorated S-AIR wireless system and new ALTUS product line.  They presented the story as a tale of Best Buy partnership.  Interesting.  Certainly in order to market an iPod story, a PC story, a Blu-ray HTIB story, and an add-on story, Sony had to collaborate on nailing feature requirements in order to secure broad buy-in across the Best Buy merchandising teams.

Which explains the EVP quote:

Mike Vitelli, executive vice president of customer operating groups at Best Buy Co., Inc., added: “By working with Sony throughout the product development process, we were able to focus directly on our customer to better understand their needs and interpret how best to present ALTUS in a retail environment.”

At Best Buy, you gotta engage the veeps if you want to coordinate a cross-departmental buying decision like the one Sony has paid for pulled off.

It’s clever on both sides, and it is the kind of thing that happens when a single retailer dominates the industry – i.e. they get to have more influence.  It also behooves those, like Sony, who wish to drive sell-through through all their channels, to strive harder, to engage earlier, and to fund special programs that service the needs/wants of the major retailers in the channel.  It’s like Best Buy is an only-child… it gets what it wants, and in doing so, can tell a story at retail that no other electronics retailer can.  In order to get what it wants, the industry implicitly gets in return a set of channel-optimized product requirements to incorporate… it’s just that we have to have faith that Best Buy’s merchants and floor personal are truly sowing the right insight from consumers, who, ultimately, validate the entire approach.

Sony’s S-AIR system is an STS-based wireless audio system (as can be seen from teardown photos at FCC) that has seen duty in products from Klipsch, earlier Panasonic wireless HTIBs (now Avnera), and a number of other brands with less successful executions.  Sony is one of STS’s most persistent integrators, and have weathered the earlier weaker product concepts to arrive at this current generation.  It’s actually nice to see a coherent attempt to tell their marketing story. Afterall, this stuff is not your ordinary consumer purchase.

My only gripe about the product is the price points of their retail SKUs.  They’re a little scary to look at.  See below for the basics of what all is in the packages, with crude call-outs for the cost-driving technology that product makers typically puke at when undertaking wireless designs:

• ALT-SA31iR – $700 – iPod dock, S-AIR remote control, two wireless speakers – total of 4 STS radios, 3 power supplies
• ALT-SA10Ti – $400 – iPod speakerdock, S-AIR remote control, wireless subwoofer – total of 3 radios, 2 power supplies
• ALT-SA32PC – $500 – USB S-AIR transmitter, two wireless speakers – 3 radios, 2 power supplies
• ALT-A33PC – $200 – USB S-AIR transmitter, universal RCA output receiver – 2 radios, 1 power supply
• ALT-SA34R – $350 – 2 small form factor wireless “socket” speakers, remote control – 3 radios, 2 power supplies.
• BDV-E500W – $800 – Blu-ray Home theater receiver with wireless surround speakers. – 2 radios, 1 power supply

Sony Electronics Release.

I’m sure I’ll talk more about these products in time.  For now… enjoy the hype.