Paul Gluckman

Akamai experienced “continued high levels” of internet traffic in Q4 for over-the-top video services and downloads of e-gaming software, CEO Tom Leighton told a quarterly call Tuesday. The platform's traffic reached a record of 181 Tbps Nov. 10, 50% higher than any 2019 peak, he said. “As life returns to a more normalized pre-pandemic state, we do not expect to see our traffic on our platform decrease,” said Chief Financial Officer Ed McGowan. “The pandemic has accelerated consumer usage of the internet in areas like OTT video, gaming and e-commerce, and we believe this usage pattern will likely persist.” Akamai expects traffic to continue to grow in 2021 “at a rate more in line with pre-2020 historical levels,” he said. The stock closed 10.9% lower Wednesday at $105.10.

Cisco's “premise” is that enterprise customers will begin returning to physical offices in mid- to late summer, said CEO Chuck Robbins on a fiscal Q2 call Tuesday. As companies look to prepare, “we’ve seen significant uptake in Wi-Fi 6,” he said. “That will require switching infrastructure as people come back to the office and begin to put load on those wireless networks.” Cisco assumes every meeting in the future will be “hybrid,” even after people return to physical workspaces, he said. “You’ll have people in the office, and you’ll have people remote. In order to accommodate that, we suspect most of our customers will be putting video units in every conference room.” Cisco’s “strong momentum” with Webex continued in the quarter ended Jan. 23, said Robbins. The platform served nearly 600 million users, and “we are connecting over 6 billion calls every month,” he said. “Our goal is to deliver a 10X better experience than just in-person interactions.”

Smartphone imports to the U.S. declined 15% in 2020 to 181.69 million under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule’s 8517.12.00 subheading, show Census Bureau data we accessed through the International Trade Commission. It's the first time since Census began keeping such records in 2007 that shipments fell below 200 million.

U.S. importers sourced record quantities of laptops, tablets and TVs in 2020 to meet high demand for connectivity and home entertainment gear during lockdowns, said Census Bureau data we accessed Sunday through the International Trade Commission. The 125.68 million laptops and tablets under Harmonized Tariff Schedule 8471.30.01 was a 23% increase from 2019 and the most in any year since Census began reporting that HTS category in 2007. Q4 shipments of 43.44 million laptops was the highest quarterly volume recorded, rising 40%.

Few details are set in stone for CES 2022, except for CTA’s commitment to return to a physical show Jan. 5-8 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, CEO Gary Shapiro told us. “Nothing’s off the table,” Shapiro said when we asked if CTA will limit show attendance to crowds smaller than the customary 170,000 or impose COVID-19 vaccine or testing conditions. It’s “possible” CTA will require proof of a vaccine as a condition for registering for CES 2022, said Shapiro. “A lot of groups are trying to figure that out. You see what others are doing and you get to best practices. A lot of lawyers and HR people are looking at the same questions.” Canceling CES 2021 “financially was a huge hit for us,” said Shapiro, refusing to disclose the damage, except to talk about the impact in headcount terms. “We did have a staff layoff,” he said. “We cut expenses dramatically.” CTA’s workforce is about 130, compared with 190 pre-pandemic, he said.

With the 5G transition in the past year evolving “from hype to reality,” Israeli networking equipment vendor Ceragon Networks is working with operators to push 5G “from initial trials into the field,” said CEO Ira Palti on a Q4 call Monday. “This is what we have been waiting for and are very excited to develop.” Adoption of open radio access networks is “picking up speed,” said Palti. ORAN lets operators “integrate specialist solutions for each network domain from different vendors,” he said. “The market is becoming more democratized, which plays to our favor.” The transition from 4G to 5G “is creating a huge change in the way networks are designed,” he said. "We help operators achieve an evolutionary approach. We provide a wireless-based backhaul network that is supporting 4G networks and that can be upgraded cost effectively to 5G.” Ceragon claims “major tier 1 operators” in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia as “recently acquired” customers, he said.

Energizer customers are buying batteries en masse “for immediate use,” said CEO Mark LaVigne on a fiscal Q1 call Monday. “Consumers have increased the number of devices they own, as well as their usage of those devices.” Pandemic-driven demand “for the foreseeable future will continue to be the main story,” he said.

Starz added 800,000 streaming subscribers in fiscal Q3 ended Dec. 31, finishing the quarter with 28 million global customers, said Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer on a Thursday investor call. “We're well on our way to our goal of 50 million to 60 million global subscribers by 2025, the vast majority of which will be high-value streaming subs,” he said. “Amazingly, in spite of the challenges” from COVID-19, Lionsgate is shooting 19 scripted television series and another 20 unscripted shows globally, and five feature films “have returned to production,” he said. Lionsgate’s fiscal Q4 ending is perhaps the first time “where all the players are kind of on the field right now,” except for Paramount+, said Starz CEO Jeff Hirsch when asked about streaming competition. The “big broad-based streaming services,” including Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu, “are trying to service everybody in the home,” he said. “That's where the real competition is going to be, and you're going to see people competing on ad spend, people competing on price and people competing on bundling.”

COVID-19 was a “critical catalyst” and a “massive accelerant” to the digital transformation that was “already reshaping the working world” before the pandemic, said Poly CEO Dave Shull on a fiscal Q3 investor call Thursday. “Zoom, Teams and Slack were not invented in response to the coronavirus,” he said. “They were already there.” Remote work “and the infrastructure necessary to support it were already spreading throughout the working world,” he said. “The pandemic has just exponentially accelerated adoption and usage of these types of platforms.” Shull is a “remote video convert,” he said. “I've gone from abhorring remote working to fully embracing the work revolution. Videoconferencing has become a way of life. Embracing video and the cloud transition will define the post-COVID return to the office.” Analysts estimate fewer than 10% of the roughly 50 million conference rooms in the world are “video-enabled,” he said. “They also estimate there are more than 400 million legacy phones in offices around the world that will be replaced with cloud-based audio devices and collaboration tools.” The stock closed 19.4% higher Friday at $41.85.

Product development in Nokia’s 5G network business is “delivering in a pretty promising manner,” said CEO Pekka Lundmark on a Q4 call. The company plans to increase its R&D investment “to make sure that we repeat the success of 4G also in 5G,” he said. Nokia has 90% success converting 4G network contracts to 5G, excluding China, he said. “We have currently 195 commercial 5G engagements,” including 45 “live 5G networks” and deployments that have progressed to “paid trials,” he said. Lundmark estimated Nokia’s 5G network market share was 27%-28% at the end of 2020 and will fall slightly to 25%-27% by Dec. 31: “Not that dramatic, but still there is a small drop.” For 2020, “we cannot be happy” that sales for the Nokia group declined 4% on a “constant currency” basis, despite a 19% increase in North America, he said. Sales in Europe, its No. 2 market, rose 2% in constant currency, he said. The stock closed 7% lower Thursday at $4.37.