On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

It was a long time coming-- Kesa manages to find a willing Comet buyer in the shape of "Hailey," a group of companies headed by retailer turnaround specialists OpCapita.

The price of sale? "An aggregate consideration of £2."

Only two pounds? That's not even 1 pound per letter for this famous UK brand, but the deal gets worse...

Kesa also had to give the new owners a dowry worth £50M. And it gets to keep the liability of paying out on the Comet Benefit Pension Scheme.

Kesa chariman David Newlands puts it bluntly-- "We had to pay £50m to get the business away. We will write it off as having no value." That's £10M for each letter in the Comet brand...and further evidence (as if any was needed) of a UK retail sector best described as "dire."

Kesa will only get something out of "investing" £50M if OpCapita manages to "flip" Comet to a new owner for more than £70M.

In H1 2011, Comet sales fell by 18.6% on a like-for-like. OpCapita claims it has "no intention to make redundancies" nor will it implement "a significant store closure programme." Yet everyone expects some of Comet's 248 retail outlets to close...

Meanwhile, KESA group is expected to deliver a first half retail loss of around €11m, including a retail loss of around €26m at Comet.

GoKesa Electricals: Proposed Disposal of Comet

Asus launches the successor to the Eee Pad Transformer-- the Transformer Prime, the first tablet from the company carrying the newly revealed quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor (previously known as Kal El).

The Transformer is best known for having the keyboard dock turning it into an Android-powered laptop of sorts.

The Prime carries a 10.1" 1280 x 800 display, 8.3mm-thick body, 1GB of RAM and 32 or 64GB of storage, together with mini-HDMI output, microSD slot, SonicMaster audio and 2 cameras (1.2MP front-facing, 8MP back-facing with an auto-focusing f/24 lens). The exterior gets a Zenbook-style spun aluminium makeover, and has in hydro-oleophobic coating preventing fingerprint smudging.

It uses Android 3.2, and Asus promises an Ice Cream Sandwich update will be available by December 2011. The company claims the tablet has a battery life of 12 hours (through 22Wh battery), with the dock adding a further 6 hours of power.

The separately available keyboard dock also gets an upgrade, being thinner and lighter. It has a touchpad, USB 2.0 port and a full-size SD slot.

Go Asus Eee Tablets

Forty years ago, Sony regarded the TV business as a golden child-- now the company sees it as a profits-sucking burden, complete with vastly reduced forecasts, a lack of profitability spanning 8 years and soaring production costs.

Yet more writing on a wall screaming out "the TV industry is in trouble!"

Sony slashes midterm sales targets by 50%-- projecting WW unit sales of 20M for the fiscal year ending March 31 2012 (from previous estimates of 40), together with a 4th consequtive annual loss of $1.15 billion.

The reduction in sales volume will result in penalties worth $640M Sony has to pay to Samsung, the company with whom Sony has a panel-making joint venture-- a venture Sony is negotiating to dissolve, according to sources speaking to the Financial Times.

Sony also plans a number of cost-cutting measures-- from LCD panel cost reductions to improving on model mix in developed markets and splitting the TV business organisational structure from 1 business into 3 entities.

This way, Sony hopes to return to making profit from TVs by 2014-- even if investors are described to be "unconvinced," hoping Sony would just retreat from making TVs instead. Meanwhile, TV makers Japan and elsewhere (including Grundig and Panasonic) continue facing stiff competition from South Korea and Taiwan.

Go Sony TV Business Profitability Improvement Plan

Go Sony TV Business to Become 3-Headed Beast

Go Sony Retreats From Making TVs (FT.com)

The wearable health and wellness technology industry gets a new entry with the Jawbone Up-- a bracelet and app combination keeping track of daily physical activity and sleeping habits.

A shock-resistant motion sensor monitors daily activity, acting as a pedometer and counting the calories the user burns and distance traveled. It also acts as a sleep monitor, tracking total hours of sleep, how longs it takes the wearer to actually sleep, and even sleep quality.

Meanwhile a vibration motor acts as either a silent alarm clock or a reminder to move if inactive for too long.

The bracelet syncs activity data with the companion iPhone app via 3.5mm audio jack, generating enough graphs and statistics to satisfy all data fiends. The app also acts as a meal planner/food diary.

The band has an outer layer in medical-grade hypo-allergenic rubber, and is available in 3 sizes and 7 different colours.

Go Jawbone Up