Rebecca Day

Personalized TV, a smart speaker for music enthusiasts and 5G phones highlighted Google’s fall product introductions in a Wednesday YouTube event geared to the increased time consumers spend at home due to COVID-19. Over the past five months, Americans increased the time they spend listening to music at home 61%, said Mark Spates, Nest product manager.

In a product refresh for the holiday season, Roku added products and focused on MVPD customers. Its Live TV Channel tile available on the user interface steers viewers to free linear content, with 100-plus channel partners. A section on the website tells customers how to get free local channels via an HD antenna, with tabs that take them to Amazon or Walmart for shopping. Roku’s OS 9.4 adds integration. It brings hints for voice commands, said the company Monday. The website asks, “Tired of paying too much for cable?” and gives viewers ways they can reduce “or completely cut your cable bill” by replacing a set-top box with a Roku player. A “How to cut the cord” section instructs cable customers how to cancel service, starting with “Be confident.” That includes being “firm but polite,” Roku says. “Prepare for push-back” when pay-TV providers offer deals. “When your service provider tempts you with retention offers, remember all the money you’ll save. If you take one of these deals, set a reminder for when it expires so you can try again before rates go up,” says the streaming platform provider. NCTA declined to comment Tuesday.

Amazon One launched Tuesday in two Seattle-area Amazon Go stores as a “fast, convenient” way to use palms to pay, present a loyalty card, enter a stadium or "badge" into work. It's designed to be “highly secure and uses custom-built algorithms and hardware to create a person’s unique palm signature,” the company blogged. It's protected by “multiple security controls.” Palm images are “never stored on the Amazon One device” and are encrypted and sent to a “highly secure area we custom-built in the cloud where we create your palm signature." The retailer believes the technology has “broad applicability beyond our retail stores, so we also plan to offer the service to third parties like retailers, stadiums, and office buildings so that more people can benefit from this ease and convenience in more places.”

Some 35% of consumers plan to shop earlier this holiday season, Piper Sandler emailed investors Thursday. More than half of consumers are “very much” avoiding large/crowded stores, up from 49% in June, while 52% expect to shop online more than before COVID-19. The analysts see a “strong pipeline of product cycles” in the second half and in 2021 driven by 5G smartphones, 5G home networking, 8K TVs and PlayStation 5 and Xbox launches. Half of iPhone owners are more interested in buying a new one this year vs. second half 2019 due to the likely launch of 5G models. Average time spent watching TV daily increased to 2.3 hours in September vs. 2.1 in June, twice pre-coronavirus levels. Cable TV (3 hours), Netflix (2.3) and YouTube (2.3) had the highest daily viewership, remaining relatively consistent over the past five months. Disney+ (1.9) exceeded a forecast. Some 43% of September respondents used a telehealth platform in the past three months vs. 28% in June.

Ring security for the car, voice calling via Fire TV, beefed up Echo devices and cloud gaming headlined Amazon’s hardware announcements in a livestreamed event Thursday. Ring also announced a $249 indoor drone, with an autonomous camera “that will automatically fly to predetermined areas of the home.” The Ring Always Home Cam records only when in flight and is “loud enough so you hear when it’s in motion,” said Ring President Leila Rouhi.

Universal Electronics Inc.'s Nevo Butler smart home hub with voice assistant is due on the market in late Q4, said CEO Paul Arling on a Wednesday investor call (see here and here). "We have some customers who have not really fallen very much at all,” he said, saying those who had a fully implemented QuickSet system in place last year weren’t as hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. Amid social distancing, those companies were able to provide a “quick install” by a technician or customers, or customers could self-install a cable system that was delivered to them. Do-it-yourself customers followed on-screen instructions after connecting the set-top box to a TV. The QuickSet platform reads information from the device, pings the cloud to identify the box and then “blasts out the information to configure everything,” the corporate chief said. Even if some existing set-tops can be voice-controlled, “they’re two-way RF, not IP-enabled,” said Arling: Those boxes wouldn’t be controllable by existing voice assistants for audiovisual functions, “but they can be by Nevo Butler or a product that utilizes our QuickSet technology.” Nevo Butler doesn’t answer informational questions such as “How tall is Mount Everest?” which Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant do; it focuses on home control.

U.S. retailers cut orders for merchandise by 9% at the pandemic's height, said PingPong Payments Monday, while consumer spending rose 6% year on year in Q2. Demand outstrips supply, and shortages will get worse when the holiday retail season starts next month, said the payments facilitator. With Amazon Prime Day set for October (see 2009210057), merchants “have been left scrambling for goods” for Q4, said Kenny Tsang, PingPong managing director, saying retailers planned too conservatively at the height of spring lockdown when placing holiday orders. Those who wanted goods faced disrupted supply chains, Tsang noted. The sector should be focused on a global e-ecommerce strategy, he said. Cross-border online sales worldwide increased 21% since January, as consumers seek cheaper prices and a broader selection.

Amazon Prime Day, which has come to span well more than 24 hours, is “coming,” said an Amazon placeholder Monday. The company didn’t give dates for the two-day event that’s informally seen this year as launching the 2020 holiday season. The company didn’t hold Prime Day in July in the typical slot as it looked to catch up from pandemic orders that drove overall Q2 e-commerce orders to record levels. On Amazon’s Q2 investor call, Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said (see 2007310023) Amazon delayed Prime Day due to fulfillment constraints created by strong COVID-19-related demand that began in March and “remained elevated” throughout Q2. Adobe reported, meanwhile, that overall U.S. e-commerce receipts exceeded $2 billion daily in May and June (see 2009140031), numbers typically achieved only during the holiday season. Three days topped $3 billion. John Copeland, Adobe vice president-marketing and customer insights, predicted last week that the holiday season "will likely get here even earlier this year.” He said 2020 “has been a difficult year, and consumers are looking forward to the comfort of the holiday season.”

Roku users can now access NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming video. The free tier includes 13,000 hours of current, classic and original movies and shows, plus live and on-demand content covering news, sports, reality, late-night and Spanish-language programming. For $4.99 monthly, Roku customers have access to the full Peacock Premium portfolio of 20,000 hours of content; another $5 zaps advertising, said Peacock Monday. A Roku spokesperson emailed there's no update on talks with AT&T to carry HBO Max, which isn't available on Roku or Amazon Fire TV platforms. Peacock is available on Apple devices, Google platforms and devices, Microsoft’s Xbox One family consoles, Vizio SmartCast TVs, Sony’s PlayStation 4 family consoles and LG Smart TVs. Eligible Comcast Xfinity X1 and Flex customers and eligible Cox Contour customers get Peacock Premium for free. In July, Comcast said Peacock had 10 million signups (see 2007300032).

Omnichannel shopping options were key during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Kohl’s CEO Michelle Gass on a Thursday National Retail Federation webinar. Kohl's is a return location for Amazon purchases, she said: Along with buy online, pick up in store fulfillment and curbside pickup, it's bringing customers into stores. Kohl’s had 60% growth in digital shopping during the pandemic, as lockdown created new digital shoppers, she said: “For folks who hadn’t adopted digital, this was the time.” Some customers are now shopping both channels, and “they’re the most valuable,” six times more productive than digital-only shoppers and four times that of store-only consumers, Gass said. It's a “tough week” at Kohl’s, cutting 15% of staff.