Apple’s decision to stop reporting unit sales figures quarterly led to analyst speculation the iPhone peaked, sending shares closing down 6.6 percent Friday at $207.48. It was Apple's best September quarter, revenue growing 20 percent year on year to $62.9 billion.
Fitbit shares closed up 26 percent at $5.95 Thursday after the company reported 26 percent growth in its health solutions business, higher average selling prices and Versa smartwatch sales growth. CEO James Park noted the company went from owning none of the U.S. smartwatch market 14 months ago to becoming No. 2 behind Apple. Lines between smartwatches and trackers are starting to blur, said Chief Financial Officer Ron Kisling, saying the rate of decline in trackers narrowed and will improve. Q3 sales were little changed from year-ago quarter at $393.6 million as its profit reversed a loss.
A tweak to the high end of Q4 subscriber guidance and comments on some higher coming spending drove a 5.7 percent decline in Spotify shares Thursday to $141.16, after Q3's shareholder letter. Chief Financial Officer Barry McCarthy said on an earnings call that accelerated pace of R&D investment in Q4 will "pressure operating margins more."
Energous shares closed down 8.5 percent to $8.04 Wednesday after the company’s Tuesday Q3 earnings report in which it reported revenue was $228,000 vs. $206,000 in Q2, it continues to work toward commercializing its WattUp wireless charging technology.
Smartphones remain among the most popular holiday gifts, and many will use them to make purchases, said Ben Arnold, CTA senior director-innovation and trends. Two-thirds of U.S. adults plan to buy a tech product as a gift this year, on par with 2017. Voice technology will help drive record-setting $96.1 billion in holiday U.S. tech revenue. Shoppers making purchases via mobile devices will bump to 58 percent, surpassing online for a second straight year, the group reported Tuesday.
Dialog Semiconductor is licensing its power management integrated circuits to Apple, with a $300 million prepayment for product purchases over three years and as much also in cash. Apple will employ more than 300 Dialog engineers for R&D and award the semiconductor company a “broad range” of new contracts. The transition is expected to foster "deeper collaboration," Dialog said Thursday. The chipmaker plans to accelerate its transition to provide “differentiated custom and configurable mixed-signal ICs across a broader customer base” in IoT, mobile, automotive and computing & storage markets. Dialog is the manufacturer for wireless charging company Energous. Its CEO Steve Rizzone told us Thursday he expects that arrangement to continue and the new pact is a “win-win” for both companies. Dialog closed up 32 percent at $24.60 on U.S. over-the-counter markets, where it's usually thinly traded.
As 86 percent of global listeners consume music through on-demand services, 38 percent obtain music through copyright infringement, reported the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. On average, consumers listen to music 2.5 hours a day, and three-quarters of listeners use smartphones for it. Stream ripping is the most common copyright infringement method for music at 32 percent. Roughly 23 percent of consumers download music via cyber lockers or peer-to-peer services and 17 percent of consumers use search engines to locate “infringing content,” it said. Stream-ripping users “are more likely to say that they rip music so they have music to listen to offline,” said IFPI, so they can avoid paying for a premium streaming subscriptions. Radio remains “resilient,” said IFPI. Some 91 percent of U.S. listeners report listening to music via radio.
French high-resolution music streaming company Qobuz, which expects to launch in the U.S. this month, is looking toward 5G to deliver its product. David Solomon, chief hi-res music evangelist for the company, said Friday that 5G could eliminate the need for 1 gigabit-per-second fiber. As a wireless network backbone, “5G is going to be so awesome” that Qobuz may be able to stream hi-res music “portably or at your place -- but over the airwaves,” he told us at a conference in Denver. Qobuz has its eyes on the 5G future and 1 gigabit fiber going into homes capable of delivering the necessary bandwidth. “It’s really easy to get the speeds that are required to have a strong enough backbone to not need additional compression methods, even if it’s not compressed fully,” said the former Tidal executive.
A high-resolution audio technology company envisions expanding its reach in smartphones through chip makers. Ken Forsythe, MQA head-partner development, said the holy grail is to crack big four U.S. music streaming services Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, Google Play Music and YouTube, and it needs broad-based hardware support to do it. The Master Quality Authenticated technology has support from the major labels -- Sony, Warner, Universal and global digital rights agency Merlin -- and high-fidelity music streaming service Tidal. The gap “is mass distribution of content,” Forsythe told us in Denver at an industry event. "We have to win the big services, so we’re putting a lot of focus there.” MQA needs a “more accessible, mainstream product,” Forsythe said. MQA is embedded in a chip that's already going into LG smartphones. The company is working on “another brand of phones," Forsythe said.
Video entertainment devices are expected to reach 457.5 million units shipped by 2022, a 10.9 percent compound annual growth rate, IDC reported Monday. Devices including Apple TV, Fire TV, Chromecast and Roku will serve as the gateway into the smart home ecosystem, leading to “immense competition” in content and price, the researcher said. It expects the worldwide smart home device market to grow 31 percent this year over 2017 to 643.9 million shipments, reaching 1.3 billion by 2022. Smart speakers are expected to post the fastest growth.