Rebecca Day

Amazon delivered two-thirds of its U.S. parcels in July, 274 million items, topping FedEx, said ABI analyst Susan Beardslee on a Wednesday webinar. Total retail revenue this year is forecast at $5.3 trillion, slipping 1.99%, with $70 billion from e-commerce, $4.2 trillion from brick-and-mortar stores. E-commerce is more than 14% of U.S. retail sales, she said. ABI pegs Amazon 2020 e-commerce sales at $310 billion, followed by Walmart at $41 billion. Beardslee noted Walmart started a Prime competitor this year. The top 10 retailers generate an estimated 63% of all U.S. digital sales. A growing concern for e-commerce companies is lack of qualified commercial truck drivers as the market recovers from COVID-19. More than 88,000 drivers were furloughed in April and either found other employment or retired, said the analyst. She cited a high incidence of noncompliant drivers found in the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse database, who hadn’t started a return to duty process as of August. The combination is resulting in driver shortages approaching 2018 levels, she said. That’s expected to “impact the cost to shippers,” as shippers incur costs to acquire and maintain talent; that cost is likely to be passed on to consumers, she said. Eighty percent of shoppers expect to use the buy online, pick up in store fulfillment option this season; 50% of retailers plan to offer it, she said.

Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell reinforced the staying power of videoconferencing hardware, mice and keyboards on a Tuesday call, after two strong quarters driven by work from home. “The biggest permanent changes were going to happen anyway,” he said, citing home-based work and education, “video everywhere,” esports and “democratization of content creation.” He predicted continued growth for webcams, video collaboration tools and PC peripherals for home-based workers and the enterprise, predicting a “big middle” of companies that choose a hybrid approach for workers after the pandemic. He expects a period where families set up separate stations for work and schooling, followed by an upgrade cycle. He predicted video calls will replace audio calls and esports viewership will overtake traditional sports. Q2 was Logitech's first quarter with $1 billion in sales, at $1.26 billion for the period ended Sept. 30, a 73% jump from the year-ago quarter. The company raised its FY 2021 outlook. Shares hit a 52-week high Tuesday and closed up 16% at $92.64. Webcams, the top sales growth category, surged 256% to $102 million, followed by video collaboration, then tablet keyboards. Gaming rose 84% to $298 million. In the League of Legends final four tournament last weekend, 110 million people were expected to have watched live, said Darrell.

Next-generation broadcast TV faces an uphill climb despite the “great job” Sinclair is doing with ATSC 3.0, Interpret Vice President Brett Sappington told a Brightcove webinar last week. “Consumers have been trained with" over-the-top, he said. "If you’re going to go to an alternative service, I think it’s more likely to go to OTT than to broadcast’s next-gen delivery." Sappington said 3.0 needs to provide something “uniquely valuable that OTT can’t do. If you can define that, you can win. If you can’t define that, you’re going to struggle.” Cord cutting hasn’t led to a meaningful increase in over-the-air viewing, said Sappington, though he’s curious to see what ATSC 3.0 does for broadcast TV. “That’s going to be a slow roll because people have to have devices, ability to access and then have to learn how to access,” he said. The new standard does allow for ways for “broadcast to grow,” he said.

Black Friday is taking on a new look at Walmart, it said Wednesday, the second and final day of Amazon’s Prime Day two-day sales fest. Walmart promised “increased availability of event items" and a monitored in-store experience. The “revamped Black Friday savings event” will deliver prices customers expect in “an entirely new way to help provide a safer and more convenient shopping experience,” Walmart said, with the health and safety of customers and employees its “top priority.” Employees will "meter customers into the store to help reduce congestion and promote social distancing inside stores." Consumers will be directed to "shop down the right-hand side of aisles to be able to easily -- and safely -- select the Black Friday items they’re interested in purchasing." On in-store Black Friday event days, “customers will form a single, straight line to enter the store,” it said. That's in contrast to past Black Fridays, when customers crowded entrances to secure doorbuster items before they sold out. This year, associates will hand out “sanitized shopping carts to customers to help with social distancing, and Health Ambassadors will be placed at entrances to greet customers and remind them to put on a mask.” It's offering the option of curbside pickup for the first time, said Scott McCall, U.S. chief merchandising officer. The company will hold its biggest wireless phone event in-stores and online on Nov. 14 with deals on iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones.

Apple’s iPhone 12 launch likely isn't the beginning of a “supercycle” for 5G, which is “still far away from real relevance,” MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett wrote investors Wednesday. Any bump in iPhone sales will likely be due to pent-up demand for upgrades and replacements in the lengthening handset replacement cycle, but that will “burn off fairly quickly,” said the analyst: “New and better cameras are great, but the real 5G cycle is at least a year or two away.” Verizon is the “big winner” of Apple’s decision to go all-in on millimeter-wave for its quartet of 5G iPhone 12 models, launched Tuesday (see 2010130043), said Moffett. Apple supports both of Verizon’s main millimeter-wave bands, 28 GHz and 39 GHz, he noted. The surprise cameo from Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg at the virtual launch event could mean Apple sees millimeter-wave as a “differentiator,” said the analyst. “But Apple’s support for mmWave may reflect the uncomfortable reality that 5G in any spectrum band other than mmWave is basically just LTE with a new name,” Moffett said. T-Mobile and AT&T already offer nationwide 5G in low frequencies to attain coverage, “but the small block widths for the spectrum mean that the user experience is not really any better than 4G." AT&T’s iPhone trade-in offer -- a free 5G iPhone for trade-in of an iPhone 8 or later, is a “preemptive race to the bottom,” he said, saying that what he sees as a net subsidy above $600 “strikes us as rather steep.” Verizon’s trade-in deal -- the $799 iPhone 12 for $15 per month and the $699 iPhone 12 mini for $12 per month with trade-in and 24-month contract -- “seems positively pedestrian by comparison.” The iPhone 12 rollout will accelerate a new round of 5G “map wars” as carriers try to “maximize perception for the breadth and depth of the new technology platform,” Citi's Michael Rollins wrote investors Wednesday: The “switcher pool and churn” will pick up in Q4, favoring “insurgents over incumbents.”

Design, MagSafe wireless charging and photography features stood out among early Twitter responses to Apple’s Tuesday launch event for four iPhone 12 models and a downsized HomePod smart speaker. So did Apple’s removal of chargers and earbuds from the box, which the company couched in an environmental light. Customers already have more than 700 million lightning headphones, said a spokesperson.

An e-waste incident reported by the Basel Action Network “appears to have been the result of human error” at a Goodwill location in Washington, D.C., where Dell displays were donated, emailed a Dell spokesperson Friday. BAN said four of six LCD monitors exported as e-waste to Guatemala were in “likely violation” of the country’s import laws and Dell’s corporate policy (see 2010070066). The other two monitors went to disposal companies in Maryland. “These six displays were incorrectly sorted and sent to another partner and never entered the Dell Reconnect program,” the Dell spokesperson said. “This Goodwill location has committed to immediate actions to ensure errors of this type do not occur again, and to use this as a training opportunity for all program participants. Dell will also support Goodwill Industries International to ensure participating Reconnect partners are aware of the processes in place.”

Consumers are more willing to share their smartphone data for contract tracing if they know someone who has had COVID-19, reported Parks Associates Wednesday. More than 80% of those who know someone infected are willing to share smartphone data, with privacy protections, vs. 65% who don’t. The effectiveness of contact tracing depends on the recall quality of the infected person and the timeliness of tracers’ ability to locate and contact those potentially exposed, said Parks Senior Director Jennifer Kent. Using Bluetooth to detect the distance and duration of interaction, a smartphone-based approach can identify people with whom an infected person may have interacted but doesn't know. It can also make notifications of potential exposure “nearly instantaneous.” In March, 8% of survey respondents knew at least one person who had COVID-19; that jumped to 35% in May. By Wednesday, the U.S. had 7,504,116 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 210,972 deaths, said the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Seventy percent of those with firsthand COVID-19 experience said they’re willing to share smartphone data to track COVID-19; 59% of those with a household member who had the disease would share, said the survey. Just under half who had experienced no symptoms would be willing to share. By mobile operating system, 58% of iPhone users would be willing, 47% of Android users. Age affected willingness to share smartphone data for contract tracing, said the report: 90% of respondents ages 18-24 were willing to share if privacy protections are offered, vs. 63% of those 65 and older. Higher-income households and those with higher levels of education are more likely to share, it said. For more effective digital contact tracing, “consumers must adopt the technology,” said Kent, citing an Oxford University study saying adoption by 15% of the population will result in reduced disease transmission and fewer deaths; adoption by 60% of the population or more yields the biggest public health benefit. To promote wider adoption, Apple and Google rolled out the Exposure Notification Express system Sept. 1, removing the requirement that individuals seek out and download an app from a public health official to participate, Kent noted. But state adoption is “slow,” she said, with only 10 states signed on by mid-September; 25 more expressed interest.

Apple stopped selling Bose, Logitech and Sonos audio products. Sonos closed 7% lower Tuesday at $14.54, Logitech down 6.1% at $75.83. A Bose spokesperson confirmed its products are no longer being sold via Apple. She noted that it isn’t the only audio company yanked from Apple’s shelves. Removal of competing Bluetooth and smart speakers from Apple led to speculation Apple is going to add to its audio line at its Oct. 13 virtual event, announced Tuesday, where it’s expected to launch the next generation of iPhones. Apple didn’t respond to questions. Sonos didn’t comment. Apple’s move underscores a risk Sonos highlighted in an SEC filing last fall that if partner competitors, such as Amazon and Apple, continue to compete with Sonos more directly, they would be able to promote their products more prominently than Sonos, refusing to promote its speakers. A Logitech spokesperson didn’t comment now, saying the company is in a quiet period ahead of its Oct. 20 quarterly report. The company has been targeting videoconferencing and gaming with its audio products amid a slowdown in the Bluetooth speaker category.

Fear during the pandemic has led to a spike in online security concerns, said Olli Bliss, F-Secure business development manager, on a Parks Associates webinar. If an employee receives an email with COVID-19 information from what appears to be her employer, "you’re probably going to open up that spreadsheet,” he said Thursday: Local authorities are mass-texting citizens, leading to opportunities for phishing scams. “People lower their guard a little bit because they’re overwhelmed with fear," the cybersecurity expert said. "They’re prone to click things.” Cybercriminals are taking advantage, impersonating personnel from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sending phishing emails for charitable donations and making bogus test and vaccination offers, said Parks analyst Brad Russell. In the past year, about 5% of U.S. broadband households have experienced identity theft -- some 5.5 million households. ID theft tops the list of cybersecurity concerns among U.S. broadband households, said Russell.