Harman is launching hardware even as it emphasizes connectivity at the IFA consumer electronics conference in Berlin. “Software is replacing hardware” in the audio space, said Michael Mauser, president-lifestyle audio, who said demand is rapidly increasing for connected audio devices in the home, car and on-the-go. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are “replacing wires,” he said. New user interfaces, Mauser said, are replacing displays and remote controls. Harman announced Google Cast as its wireless multiroom audio solution and Siri and Google Now for voice control of some of its products. Jurjen Amsterdam, Harman senior category manager-home systems, Europe, Middle East and Africa, demo'd a smartphone connecting via Spotify app to the cloud and selecting music to play, and said he then “can switch off the phone, I can kill the app, I can play the game, I can leave the house."
Sonos announced voice control integration with Amazon’s Alexa voice engine at a Tuesday news conference in New York, as expected, while Sonos will work with a variety of other companies on the connected home. Partners include Deutsche Telekom’s Qivicon. DT is private-labeling Sonos under the company’s Qivicon smart home platform and will make it available to other carriers including Dutch telecom KPN, said Brad Duea, Sonos managing director/general manager-Americas-Pacific, in an interview. Sonos also said it's integrating with Spotify Connect, enabling subscribers to control Sonos from within the Spotify app. Pandora will follow in 2017, said Sonos; its roster has 80 music streaming music services, said Chief Marketing Officer Joy Howard.
Fossil Group CEO Kosta Kartsotis said smartwatch technology will improve, with smaller devices having longer battery lives. Displays on smartwatches will shrink, “which will enable them to fit on a female brand,” and they’ll become untethered to smartphones at some point, he said on a Q2 earnings call Tuesday. “A huge amount of innovation and technology is going to make these products even more compelling to more brands.”
DTS CEO Jon Kirchner noted “migration of higher quality content distribution” from the living room to portable devices, saying on a Q2 call Monday the content universe in the living room is “widely spread" across formats. The use case is “inherently there” for higher quality audio on handsets, he said. Chief Financial Officer Mel Flanigan said DTS mobile category sales rose 37 percent to $6.4 million from the year-ago quarter, and automotive rose "substantially" to $17.5 million largely on HD Radio receipts. Total revenue was $48.7 million, up from $34.4 million, said an earnings release that raised full-year forecasts on mobile and automotive market growth. DTS Shares closed up 13 percent Tuesday to $33.02.
The automotive business is experiencing “an unprecedented social and technological transformation” due to increasingly intelligent connectivity and autonomous vehicles, with the car “getting an upgrade as never seen before,” said Harman CEO Dinesh Paliwal on an earnings call Thursday. The company reported a 12 percent rise in revenue in fiscal Q1 to $1.9 billion but cautioned on 2018 revenue due to staggered timing of automotive program launches. Longer term, the company believes it will have revenue growth from its automotive backlog, higher margin automotive services and increasing demand for connected car and autonomous driving technologies. Last-quarter revenue at its connected car unit rose 11 percent to $843 million from the year-ago period, the company said. Shares closed up 7 percent Thursday to $87.54.
Amazon efforts to drive sales of the Fire boosted its tablet market share from 0.3 percent in Q2 2015 to 4 percent this year, said a Monday IDC report. That contrasted with the direction market leader Apple and No. 2 Samsung are headed, with drops of 9.2 percent and 24.5 percent from the year-ago quarter, IDC said. Shipments in the overall tablet category sank more than 12 percent in the quarter, it said, to 38.7 million units. Sixty-five percent of tablets shipped were Android-based vs. 26 percent iOS, with Windows picking up remaining share, said the industry researcher. Consumers are looking for “more productive form factors and operating systems,” boosting detachables, said analyst Jitesh Ubrani.
The smartwatch category showed its first year-over-year decline in Q2, down 32 percent to 3.5 million units, due to a falloff in Apple Watch shipments, said an IDC report. It attributed Apple’s falloff to 1.6 million shipments in Q2 to high comparables from the initial launch quarter of the Apple Watch. Improvements to the watch aren’t expected until later this year, analyst Jitesh Ubrani said Thursday. Next-generation smartwatches “will appeal to a broader market, ultimately leading to a growing market," said analyst Ramon Llamas. IDC expects the category to return to growth next year, he said.
Pandora weathered a $76.3 million Q2 loss Friday -- wider than the year-ago net loss of $16.1 million -- as analysts took Thursday results largely in stride ahead of the company’s upcoming on-demand offering. After the Thursday earnings call, Cowen and Co. called Pandora’s Q2 results “soft” amid the on-demand buildout but maintained a “market perform” rating, noting launch of the on-demand service is contingent on securing direct deals with the three major music labels.
Smartphones, tablets, LCD TVs, laptops and desktop PCs together will contribute $114 billion, 51 percent, to tech industry's revenue this year, but in 2017, the five leading categories will account for less than half of industry income, said CTA. Smartphones continue to lead the segment, with $55 billion revenue (4 percent higher than 2015) on a projected 183 million unit shipments (up 5 percent), but the lengthening smartphone replacement cycle will make 2017 the first year smartphones decline in unit sales and revenue, said Monday's report. Emerging technology and broader adoption of connected devices will push revenue for the consumer tech industry up 1.3 percent this year. Wearable sales are projected to grow by 39 percent to 48 million units, said CTA, while tablets will continue their decline and virtual reality headset unit sales will jump along with drone sales.
Consumer ease of use, media interoperability and support for HEVC video codecs are among the new functionalities enabled by DLNA 4.0, Duncan Bees, Digital Living Network Alliance vice president-technology and strategy, told us. A test and certification program will be available late this year, he said. Citing the "broad shift" in video from HD to 4K resolution, Bees said 4.0 supports user-generated and premium service content. The guidelines support IPv6 to ensure DLNA 4.0-certified devices will continue to function as more networks transition to the protocol, he said.