Best Buy and Vivint Smart Home are expanding their partnership on an in-store smart home initiative to launch this summer in more than 400 stores, they announced Thursday. Feedback from pilots in 23 stores in Detroit and San Antonio is “overwhelmingly positive,” emailed a Best Buy spokeswoman, saying the expansion includes Best Buy’s Geek Squad staff. This brings Vivint much-needed visibility to compete with security companies such as ADT plus MVPDs, Imperial Capital analyst Saliq Khan told us. As AT&T and Comcast boosted efforts in the smart home, do-it-yourself has started to slow down, he said. “The likes of Vivint, ADT and Moni Security have to find ways to become more relevant."
TiVo is banking on pay-TV renewal business and “significant incremental opportunity” with over-the-top video providers to drive growth, CEO Tom Carson said on a Q1 earnings call, citing increasing video consumption and distribution channel growth. TiVo’s core pay-TV business is “healthy” due to long-term licensing and product deals with most operators, positioning the company to work with new entrants launching similar services, Carson said. Q1 revenue was $206 million, vs. $118 million in the year-ago quarter, benefiting from the acquisition of TiVo Solutions Inc. in Q3, the company reported Wednesday. Net loss was $35 million, vs. an $18 million net loss a year earlier. It expects a wider 2017 loss on one basis than previously forecast. The company's stock ended the day down 7.5 percent at $17.95.
Garmin is looking to “advanced wearables” to offset the "rapidly maturing" basic activity tracker market, said CEO Cliff Pemble on the company’s Q1 call Wednesday. Garmin reported a 3 percent drop in its tracker segment, but Pemble said advanced GPS wearables helped offset that. On the impact of Apple Watch in the smartwatch segment, which Apple CEO Tim Cook said a Tuesday earnings call grew nearly 100 percent year on year (see 1705030051), Pemble said Garmin is “also seeking steep growth” in advanced wearables. Despite shrinking margins in the maturing basic tracker category, Pemble said trackers are “still a very large market."
CTA spun the consumer electronics’ industry’s shortfall in reaching the eCycling Leadership Initiative’s goal to recycle 1 billion pounds of CE products annually by 2016 as a positive result, in the industry’s April 2017 sustainability report. In a year-by-year breakdown since the ELI was announced in 2011, the industry posted yearly gains until 2016, when the weight of electronics recycled fell from 700 million pounds -- the peak year -- to 630 million pounds, CTA said Thursday. The decrease should be “celebrated, not disparaged,” CTA said. “As electronics become smaller, lighter and thinner, fewer materials are required to create them.” ELI is a collaboration among manufacturers, retailers, collectors, recyclers, nongovernmental organizations and local, state and federal governments. Currently, 25 states have 25 different approaches to recycling electronics, leading to a “patchwork of regulation” that’s complex and burdensome, said CTA, which supports a single national approach.
Wireless charging and high-speed connectivity were among next-generation technology topics at a New York International Auto Show tech event. Valens Semiconductor is looking to adapt its HDBaseT transmission technology for future vehicles that will need a high-speed solution for data and HD video transfer, said Micha Risling, automotive business unit head. Autonomous cars will be a “totally new environment” with as much as 100 times the data running through vehicles today from sensors, cameras, computing units and infotainment systems, Risling said Thursday. Daimler announced it would use HDBaseT technology in future vehicles in November, and Valens investors include Samsung.
The market for wireless headphones will spike this year on Apple’s design overhaul with the iPhone 7, eliminating the 3.5 mm headphone jack and forcing its headphone users to go wireless or adopt a new wired solution. Parks Associates predicted growth in wireless headphone sales this year from a 2016 U.S. broadband household penetration rate of 16 percent for wireless earbuds and 23 percent for wireless headphones. “Consumers now have more choices and options when it comes to how they listen to audio on their devices,” a 1More spokesman emailed us after its release last week of a quad-driver, wired in-ear headphone. Harman saw an uptick in Bluetooth headphone sales before and since the introduction of the iPhone 7, Armin Prommersberger, senior vice president-technology of the Lifestyle Audio division, emailed us. “Any software, no matter the OS, chipset or resources available, can be securely updated and managed using our over-the-air technology," he also said.
Technology is poised to disrupt the car purchase process in much the same way it shook up how consumers shop for some other products, said Mark O’Neil, chief operating officer at Cox Automotive, at a National Automobile Dealers Association/J.D. Power event. The automotive market, a business segment that did less than 1 percent of consumer transactions digitally last year, could see as much as 20 percent of sales online by 2022, he said Tuesday here in New York. “If you think about any retail category out there, the consumer inevitably wins in getting it their way.” Meeting with a salesperson, securing financing and haggling over price and trade-in value could be eliminated by having consumers do those steps themselves from home on a dealer’s website, said O'Neil. Consumers are more comfortable with technology every day and will expect to be able to do more online, he said.
Walmart, after abandoning its $49-per-year Amazon Prime-like membership program in February less than a year after launch (see 1701310045), came up with a new way to reward online customers that’s outside of the e-commerce giant’s turf. In a Wednesday blog post, Marc Lore, CEO of Walmart U.S. eCommerce, announced the retailer’s discount program for customers who shop online and pick up the items in store. For customers who prefer home delivery, Walmart will ship items in two days for free, giving customers the free two-day shipping benefit of Amazon Prime without a membership fee. Walmart is leveraging its summer $3 billion purchase of Jet.com for the Pickup Discount program, said Lore, Jet.com's founder. In a post aimed at customers, Mark Ibbotson, executive vice president-central operations of Walmart U.S., said the company is testing pickup solutions including drive-through windows and in-store kiosks. He described the kiosk as a “high-tech vending machine” for online orders that scans a barcode sent to a customer’s smartphone.
Wireless charging got a boost from Dell’s announcement of a two-in-one tablet with a detachable wireless charging-enabled keyboard, said a Tuesday IHS Markit report. It uses magnetic resonance technology from WiTricity and is compatible with the AirFuel resonant specification. This “could not have come at a better time” for the industry, since 75 percent of respondents to an IHS survey said they would like wireless charging capability in laptops, said analyst Vicky Yussuff. Mobile phones remain the primary driver for wireless power technology development and will be joined by laptops and wearables, said the research firm. Global receiver unit shipments are forecast to reach 325 million units by year-end, following 40 percent growth in 2016, said IHS. Samsung’s decision to retain wireless charging on the Galaxy S7, and LG’s addition of wireless charging in the new G6 for the U.S. market were “crucial," said Yussuff. Apple is expected to follow suit later this year with its next iPhone, she said. “The mobile phone market continues to be the entry point for the consumer experience of wireless power.”
After missing a six-month deadline for completing LeEco's buy of Vizio, the companies announced Monday the deal is off due to “regulatory headwinds.” They signed a separate agreement under which Vizio connected TVs and displays will be sold in the China market, and they will incorporate LeEco’s user interface, content and distribution channels. The companies announced last summer that LeEco would buy Vizio for $2 billion as part of its strategy to bring its ecosystem of smart TVs, content and cloud services to North America. The deal also involved the spinoff from Vizio of Inscape, supplier of smart TV viewer data tracking services, which Vizio bought in 2015. Vizio still plans to spin off Inscape into a separate business entity as part of its strategic future growth plans, a Vizio spokeswoman emailed us. Vizio agreed last fall to a $2.2 million settlement (see 1702060042) after the FTC and New Jersey brought a complaint against the Inscape viewer-tracking feature, which spawned two dozen video-privacy class-action lawsuits in federal courts.