Consumer technology sales are on track for 3.2 percent growth this year to $321 billion, CTA reported Wednesday. CTA projects drones, OLED TV and virtual reality (VR) technology will each cross $1 billion in revenues for the first time in 2017. Among emerging technologies, wearables -- including fitness trackers, other health and fitness devices, hearables, over-the-counter hearing devices and smartwatches -- are expected to see 9 percent revenue growth to 48 million units, ringing up $5.6 billion. Smart home products are forecast to grow 48 percent to $3.3 billion. Sales of digital assistant devices are expected to spike 53 percent to 11 million units, pulling in $1.3 billion, while mobile VR headsets are forecast to surge 79 percent to 5.3 million units, generating $1.3 billion, said CTA. Sales of drones under about one-half pound -- FAA cutoff for mandatory drone registration -- are projected to grow 40 percent, reaching 3.4 million units with $1.1 billion revenue. In maturing categories, smartphones may advance 3 percent to 185 million shipments, totaling $55.6 billion.
Bluetooth’s new mesh capability enables many-to-many device communications and is optimized for large-scale device networks, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group announced Tuesday: It's suited for building automation, sensor networks and other IoT solutions where “tens, hundreds, or thousands of devices need to reliably and securely communicate with one another,” the group said. This is a “critical enabler” of Bluetooth’s transition from a personal area network and pairing technology to a “more scalable, robust, low-power IoT connectivity solution,” ABI Research analyst Andrew Zignani emailed in a blast Tuesday. Mesh networking opens opportunities where competing wireless connectivity technologies like ZigBee gained traction, Zignani told us. “Monitoring multiple sensors on machinery and relaying this back to a central system for predictive maintenance could be a potential use case.” Announcing support for the Bluetooth standard, Qualcomm expects to support Bluetooth mesh on all of the company’s future generations of Bluetooth LE products. Others announcing support: Toshiba and Silicon Labs (here and here).
There are opportunities and challenges with new features in Ultra HD TVs that are similar to those in the transition from NTSC to ATSC TV 20 years ago, but 4K resolution isn’t the right message to convince consumers to upgrade, CE Week in New York heard Thursday. TV marketers promised consumers 4K was going to be “amazing,” said Joel Silver, president of the Imaging Science Foundation, but “if you looked at 4K from a normal viewing distance, it looked the same as 2K,” he said. Silver cited the various sources from Ultra HD Blu-ray to premium streaming channels, along with HDR and wide color gamut, and said: “We’ve got amazing things happening, and no one knows how good we are." After “crying wolf” for so many generations of TVs and telling consumers they’re going to love the next big thing, “this time we’re actually telling the truth,” he said. Tim Alessi, senior director-product marketing for LG home entertainment products, addressed the challenge of getting consumers interested in TVs when they’re increasingly watching TV content on mobile devices: “The TV is still a family communal activity. People aren’t gathering around their iPad to watch the Super Bowl." Value Electronics President Robert Zohn told us that for consumers, “it’s all about the content.” They can have music on the go, and they’ll get the premium experience when they’re home, he said.
Amazon's Prime Day was to have begun at 9 p.m. EDT Monday, with prices cut on its Alexa, Fire and Kindle streaming, voice-activated and TV and other devices and delivery and music services (see here, here and here). Shares of Amazon retail competitors took hits Monday. While Amazon closed the day up 1.81 percent, Best Buy shares dropped 6.3 percent to $54.23, Barnes & Noble fell 4 percent to $7.15 and others also fell by lesser amounts. The Alexa voice control universe, meanwhile, expanded with compatibility announcements from Carrier and robotics maker Ecovacs. Home control company Savant also announced integration in conjunction with release of a remote for picking channels and entertainment sources.
An Amazon spokeswoman called a Thursday report by Consumer Watchdog alleging deceptive pricing (see 1707070048) "misleading." The company is "obsessed with maintaining customer trust, and work[s] hard to provide meaningful reference prices," the spokeswoman emailed us. Amazon uses "a variety of systems to validate reference prices provided by manufacturers, vendors and sellers against actual prices recently found across Amazon and other retailers.”
Netflix added Dolby Atmos support Wednesday and released its first Atmos-enabled series, the Netflix original Okja, Chief Product Officer Greg Peters blogged. Xbox customers can access Dolby Atmos immersive audio content by connecting an Xbox One or Xbox One S game console to a Dolby Atmos-enabled home theater system, TV, soundbar or via headphones, he said. For headphones to be Atmos compatible, users have to buy a $14.99 feature available via the Dolby Access app in the Xbox Store, said a Netflix product support page. Netflix plans to roll out support for Dolby technologies to additional devices over time. The companies said more titles are coming, including four more Atmos series this year.
Pandora CEO Tim Westergren stepped down, among other changes in a Tuesday announcement. Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra will be interim CEO while the board begins an immediate search for a new chief, said the company. Also leaving: President Mike Herring and Chief Marketing Officer Nick Bartle. Added to the board, from which co-founder Westergren left, is Jason Hirschhorn, former Sling Media president and CEO of digital content creation company Redef. Multiple changes in the leadership team signal “likely forthcoming changes in the company’s strategy as well,” Dougherty's Steven Frankel wrote investors, citing SiriusXM’s 19 percent investment in Pandora this month (see 1706090005). The company is “desperately in need of a front man,” wrote Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter. The analyst wrote SiriusXM “may exert greater influence than was previously expected” by pivoting from the current strategy, which could include scaling back on on-demand subscription ambitions. Pandora director Roger Faxon said the board over the past few weeks took steps to “refocus and reinforce Pandora” and said the Plus and Premium subscription offerings are “new, integral parts of our arsenal.” The transition of music listeners from traditional terrestrial radio to “more dynamic and flexible offerings” is a “massive opportunity,” said Faxon. In the Tuesday Pandora announcement, Westergren said he came back to the CEO role last year to “drive transformation across the business,” and that included renegotiated relationships with music companies, the on-demand launch and tech innovations in the advertising business. Pandora is “perfectly poised for its next chapter,” he said. Pachter noted the four remaining board members took action leading to the departures of Westergren, Herring and Bartle, suggesting they were “dissatisfied with Pandora’s strategy and felt a change was in order.”
Immersive audio format Dolby Vision is expanding among media companies, Dolby CEO Kevin Yeaman told a William Blair investor conference Wednesday. It has a cinema base of more than 2,500 screens and a content library of over 500 titles. On the broadcast side, Comcast is supporting Dolby Atmos, and the U.K.’s BT Sport has added Atmos to its premium sports offering, Yeaman noted.
Analysts reacted positively in Monday notes to investors on SiriusXM’s $480 million Pandora stake (see 1706090005), viewing it as validation of the music streamer's advertising-supported business. BTIG has "long been skeptical of Pandora’s potential as a standalone business,” said Brandon Ross, acknowledging the “potential strategic value” Pandora brings to SiriusXM and to Liberty Media, which owns 65 percent of SiriusXM. Through the Pandora investment “or an eventual acquisition,” he wrote, “we hope that SIRI can learn how to succeed in the mobile world.” SiriusXM (SIRI) needs to become more like its mobile competitors at collecting and using data, said the analyst, saying the connected car is more future risk to the satellite radio provider than benefit. Macquarie Capital views SiriusXM as the “greater winner” from the investment, given the deal’s structure and the voice the company will have in Pandora’s strategic direction with addition of three board members, wrote Amy Yong. Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter expects Pandora subscriptions to grow and “contribute meaningful leverage and profitability” when they reach critical mass. He sees potential inclusion of Pandora in SiriusXM’s product offerings as a way for the satellite firm to provide “a more interactive experience” to its 30 million-plus subscribers. A SiriusXM weakness has been “lack of on-demand listening," Pachter said.
SHANGHAI -- CTA President Gary Shapiro walked a line between hope and disappointment at CES Asia (see 1706070031) Thursday on Trump administration trade policies. In response to our question on what he would like to see on trade, Shapiro said, “We were very disappointed that he pulled out of the Trans-Pacific agreement,” saying the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a “zero-tariff deal among 20 countries.” The administration’s trade stance is “not as terrible as some of us had feared, but it’s not as good as it could be still -- especially with the importance of trade to our future,” Shapiro said.