Rebecca Day

Strong growth in IoT was driven by demand for connected devices, Qualcomm investors were told. Work from home creates more connectivity needs, said Chief Financial Officer Akash Palkhiwala, and the company expects those trends to continue this year. The company isn't selling to Huawei and doesn’t have a license to do so, but President Cristiano Amon said the opportunity creates an expansion of the addressable market for its technologies unit: Qualcomm is “hedged” given its high traction with high-tier OEMs, but if, long term, it receives a license to sell to Huawei, it would be a “net positive.” China’s price-driven transition to 5G will have an impact on how fifth-generation wireless unfolds in emerging markets, he said. Amon said 130 operators globally are investing in millimeter wave. With device prices becoming “very reasonable” with mmWave, “that opportunity for attach is going to be a significant tailwind,” he said. The automotive industry, meanwhile, is moving at an “unprecedented rate,” said CEO Steve Mollenkopf, and the company expects to expand its share there “as we have done in smartphones.” 5G ramp up and “significant design wins” with OEMs drove a 73% surge in revenue to $8.3 billion for the quarter ended Sept. 27, said the chief. The company has more than 110 5G agreements, including all major handset makers, and forecasts 175 million-225 million units for calendar 2020. Shares closed 13% higher Thursday at $145.41.

A disappointing back-to-school season has been “elongated,” said ODP CEO Gerry Smith on a quarterly call Thursday (see Q3 materials here). The former Office Depot expects sales that didn’t materialize in the traditional BTS season to stretch into Q4 and Q1, Smith said, hoping the 53% of students currently learning from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic will go back to the classroom in coming months and need supplies. ODP had a 9% Q3 revenue drop to $2.5 billion, but e-commerce sales grew 20% as the company positioned itself as a source for home office and learn-from-home products. Shares closed up 18% at $24.90. Chief Financial Officer Anthony Scaglione highlighted adjacent categories -- cleaning and break room, personal protective equipment, technology, furniture, and copy and print -- which made up 47% of business solutions division revenue. Buy online, pick up in store fulfillment rose 82%, said Scaglione.

Q1 events are “certainly at risk” given state-level restrictions and the potential for venue closings due to COVID-19 government restrictions and venue takeovers, said Emerald interim CEO Brian Field. “We have already canceled some of our first quarter events and postponed others.” That includes the Kitchen + Bath Business Industry Show, scheduled virtually Feb. 9-11. Canceled trade shows cost CEDIA Expo owner Emerald Holding $68 million in Q3, said the company Monday, reporting an 89% revenue drop from the year-ago quarter to $8.5 million. It canceled “substantially all” trade events in the quarter due to COVID-19, it said. It canceled 94 in 2020 and hasn't staged an in-person one since mid-March, said Chief Financial Officer David Doft. The canceled gatherings generated about $236 million of 2019 revenue. Net loss narrowed to $15.3 million vs. $19.7 million. Emerald received an additional $39.8 million of payments in Q3 and $9.5 million so far in Q4 for insurance claims, with an additional $15.8 million recently approved and pending receipt, said Doft.

Spotify shares fell after the streaming service reported a $46.8 million Q3 operating loss vs. a $63 million operating profit in the 2019 quarter. Revenue grew to $2.3 billion vs. $1.9 billion in Q3 2019, said Thursday's shareholder letter. Monthly average users (MAUs) advanced 29% to 320 million. Premium subscribership grew 27%, or 5% sequentially, to 144 million. Ad-supported users increased 31%, 9% sequentially, to 185 million. Shares closed 3.4% lower Thursday at $266.87.

Amid travel restrictions, Savant created a virtual tour of its New York Experience Center for dealers to educate clients and designers about benefits of home control, lighting design and audio/video systems, said Angie Larson, a sales operation executive, on a Wednesday video call. Digital tours let the company handle far more tours, expanding on the “hundreds” it holds per year at the 8,000-square-foot space in the SoHo section of Manhattan. Using the virtual platform, the control company has tripled the number of tours it can accommodate, while attracting “an audience from all over the globe,” Larson told us. Savant’s TrueImage technology, used in its smartphone app, powers real-time changes inside the showroom, remotely, giving dealers a way to demonstrate technology in a showroom setting. “We’re trying to give dealers a resource when many of them can’t open their own showrooms,” Larson said.

Online sales will top $2 billion daily Nov. 1-21, swelling to $3 billion daily Nov. 22-Dec. 3, Adobe Analytics forecast Wednesday. Nov. 1-Dec. 31 holiday season e-commerce sales will total $189 billion, “shattering all previous records” with a 33% year-on-year surge, Adobe said. Another round of government stimulus checks -- or a shutdown of physical stores in large parts of the country -- could produce an additional $11 billion in online shopping, it said. Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are projected to pull in more than $10 billion in e-commerce, up 39% over 2019. Cyber Monday will again be the biggest online shopping day, generating $12.7 billion, a 35% spike, said the analytics firm. Some $6 billion will be spent online on Thanksgiving, a 42% rise. Cyber Week, traditionally Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, will be replaced this year by “Cyber Months,” Adobe said. Mobile shopping will continue its upward surge, with U.S. consumers spending $28.1 billion more on their smartphones, up 55%. Smartphones will generate 42% of online holiday sales, said the report. Thirty-one percent of consumers rarely shopped online before lockdowns took hold in April; 9% were net new to online shopping. Half of all orders Dec. 21-23 will be at retailers that offer buy online, pick up in store, up 40% from last year, which is expected to result in longer pickup lines later in the season. Shoppers are 9% more likely to buy at retailers that offer BOPIS or curbside pickup on big sale days. Health concerns factor into 19% of consumers’ plans for BOPIS or curbside pickup this year vs. 4% last year.

IoT has a “long path,” Silicon Labs CEO Tyson Tuttle told investors Wednesday, and momentum is “starting to build” in the consumer market. “You are going to continue to see new technologies and new capabilities added,” he said. “Ease of use is also something that must get addressed for it to scale.” Wireless was over two-thirds of Silicon Labs’ IoT business in Q3, helping to drive overall revenue to the high end of guidance at $221.3 million, down from $223 million in the year-ago quarter but up from $207.5 million in Q2. Revenue from IoT products set a record at $133 million, up 16% from Q2, said Chief Financial Officer John Hollister. Customers are moving from separate microcontrollers to connected devices that add wireless or that integrate the two, said Tuttle. The company expects to gain traction in smart home, industrial and proprietary and consumer segments via its Zigbee, Thread and Bluetooth business.

Give consumers what they want and let them shop accordingly, said Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner on a National Retail Federation webinar Tuesday, noting retailers must adapt to how people expect to shop in uncertain times. COVID-19 accelerated initiatives the retailer had in its sights, he said. On holding three November deal events (see 2010140038) versus Black Friday week, Furner said it was a Texas store team’s email suggesting giving employees Thanksgiving off, “with all that’s going on,” that put in motion the decision. Three events give customers time to think through shopping options and whether to buy in store or online, or buy online, pick up in store. “Our events will be much more digital this year than they’ve ever been before,” the executive said. Furner compared changes in retailing to time he spent with Walmart in China in 2013-15, when he saw a rate of consumer change “enabled by technology that I probably would not have dreamed possible at such a large scale had I not been there.” A country with 1 billion consumers went from “analog and physical to digital in just a couple years.” Built on mobile technology, it showed “how fast things can happen without the constraint of legacy infrastructure. You’re trying to adapt as you move.” Since the pandemic, “we think we probably skipped a couple of years, if not three or four years, of adopting one channel and using the other channel to help enable it,” said Furner.

Qualcomm began sampling its next-generation Immersive Home Platforms, successor to its mesh networking platforms, said the company Tuesday. Its Wi-Fi 6 and 6E products are due in the market next year, it said. For consumers who lack a mesh network, the Immersive Home Platforms ensure “high-performance” gigabit connectivity is available anywhere in a home, emailed Nick Kucharewski, general manager-wireless infrastructure and networking. FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly called Qualcomm’s Wi-Fi 6E announcement “great news” and a “massive game changer.” With some more work by the FCC this year, “we can expand unlicensed opportunities in band even further,” he tweeted. Pending FCC certification, consumers will get the benefits of Wi-Fi 6E in mobile, at home and in the enterprise, said Kucharewski. Tri-band Wi-Fi 6 platforms are designed to simultaneously leverage all three spectrum bands to support 2.4 GHz IoT-class devices and current legacy 5 GHz media devices and to enable “congestion-relieving migration” of node-to-node backhaul traffic from 5 GHz to the 6 GHz band, Kucharewski said.

CTA forecasts a 10% Q4 spending lift on consumer tech hardware and services to $135 billion, it said Wednesday. Some 81% of U.S. adults are “more likely” or “just as likely” to buy tech products during the holiday season, despite economic and safety concerns during the pandemic, said the survey of 2,007 U.S. adults Sept. 10-13. “With consumers forgoing budgets for travel and experiences this year, more dollars will go towards technology gifts,” said Lesley Rohrbaugh, director-market research. The tech gifts consumers want most are smartphones, laptops, videogame consoles, TVs and wearables. About 70% of holiday shoppers plan to buy at least one content-related gift this season. Forty-five percent of consumers expect to buy at least one smartphone as a gift in Q4, a 4 point increase. Of those, 66% expect to upgrade to 5G. Interest in education-oriented tech products grew, said CTA. Some 26% plan to gift kits dedicated to engineering, robotics and coding for the holidays, up 5 points. Eighty-five percent plan to buy tech gifts in brick-and-mortar stores this season, 79% online. Two-thirds say the ability to socially distance from others will be a key factor. Consumers plan to buy fewer gifts and spend 18% less this holiday season than last year, reported KPMG. It canvassed 1,000 consumers in September, finding 41% who said COVID-19 fears will prevent them from shopping Black Friday sales in person.