Kramer Electronics is taking their technology further into the boardroom. On May 28, the company announced a 50% acquisition of Singapore based WOW Vision, a manufacturer of product solutions for corporate and hospitality meeting spaces and educational facilities. Their products enable convenient wireless connection to, and the sharing of, large screen displays from laptops and mobile devices and provide effective, efficient, productive two-way collaboration. With this investment, Kramer seeks to boost its wireless sharing solutions, as a worldwide supplier of innovative and reliable signal management products.
“We are very excited about adding WOW Vision to the Kramer family because BYOD, collaboration, and wireless applications are increasingly critical in today’s converging AV/IT world. WOW Vision offers the best solutions in the market and this partnership allows us to add these products to our already comprehensive line of solutions,” stated Dr. Joseph Kramer, CEO of Kramer Electronics. “Most importantly though, as WOW Vision continues to design and build cutting edge product solutions to make meetings smarter and more productive in business and education environments, we can leverage the strengths of our Kramer brand, our marketing acumen, and our worldwide distribution channels to get the products into the hands of our customers.”
- As a result of this new partnership between Kramer and WOW Vision, Kramer will assume responsibility for worldwide branding and distribution of WOW Vision’s products. WOW Vision will continue to conceive and develop industry leading products that make meetings and learning environments more productive and more interactive.
“We have developed the industry’s leading technologies for facilitating the effective wireless connection of meeting participants to a large screen display, and for providing unparalleled meeting collaboration in the corporate and education markets. We pride ourselves on our ability to develop unique technology solutions for this market segment,” stated Dr. Dinesh Tripathi, CEO of WOW Vision. “In this relationship with Kramer, we believe we have found the perfect partner. Kramer has incredibly well developed worldwide distribution channels coupled with a very strong brand name recognized for producing reliable products, and supported by knowledgeable and dedicated employees.”
As a current WOW Vision distributor, Starin views this as a very positive move. Bill Mullin, president of Starin, commented, “This will validate WOW Vision’s advanced collaboration solution, Collab8, by having a world-wide significant name in AV behind it. This will facilitate growth for development, as well as reaching market potential. What our current channel partners know as a true ahead-of the-curve platform will be assured of greater capabilities. Starin has an excellent relationship already with Kramer and there are talks with management for a highly coordinated and effective go-to-market that will help new and existing resellers reach greater income and profits with the tools to satisfy customers.”
Kramer Electronics will be launching its first two products: the Kramer VIA Collage and the Kramer VIA Connect. The products will be introduced at InfoComm 2014 which will be held June 18th through the 20th at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, NV.
For the burgeoning collaboration market, only the fully featured BYOD oriented Kramer VIA Collage can do all of the following: wirelessly allow up to six participants to show their screens on one display, with the possibility of using two displays and allowing up to twelve participants to be simultaneously displayed; it allows collaboration from any mix of devices (PCs, Macs, tablets, smartphones and more); it enables meeting participants to simultaneously create and edit a common document through their individual devices; it provides the ability for documents to be shared and saved instantaneously by all team participants utilizing the VIA Collage; and its interactive whiteboard function offers multiple users the ability to annotate, edit or highlight any image on the screen via their touch enabled devices. In fact, every member of the meeting can participate in brainstorming activities simply by using the keyboard and mouse on their own device.
The compact VIA Connect is a wireless presentation hub which provides quick and easy wireless connection to, and sharing of, a large screen device by several users. Multiple meeting participants can display their images or at any time one individual presenter can easily choose to have their device be the only image displayed. As with the VIA Collage, the VIA Connect can accommodate any PC, Mac, iOS or Android device.
The Kramer VIA Collage and the Kramer VIA Connect will be on display at the InfoComm show in Kramer booth C7736 located in the Central Hall of the Convention Center.
This article was updated with comment from Starin on May 29 at 4:23pm.
