Rebecca Day

With iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales coming in at the low end of the forecast range last quarter -- and below analyst expectations -- CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday cited areas of potential iPhone growth. Cook pointed on an earnings call to the installed base of iPhone users who have yet to upgrade, 73 percent, and to the number of users switching from the Android OS, which he called the highest rate to date. Apple sold 47.5 million iPhones last quarter, representing $31.4 billion in revenue, but both units and revenue dropped 22 percent sequentially, said the company’s 8-K SEC filing. Apple shares closed down Wednesday 4.3 percent to $125.14.

Adding cloud DVR service as a feature option is a way for operators to add revenue and take advantage of the surging video market, according to a Parks Associates webcast. Cloud DVR can also be used to retain or lure new customers who want the flexibility of time-shifted viewing without the drawbacks of a hard drive-based DVR, said Parks analyst Brett Sappington.

An estimated 900 million people access TV programming and movies online today, a figure that's expected to jump to more than 1.3 billion by 2019, said a white paper from Parks Associates on interactive over-the-top services.

Chinese consumers (65 percent) tend to prefer to shop in brick-and-mortar stores, while those who buy online, generally 30-somethings, do so to avoid crowds and to find the best bargain, said CEA Chief Economist Steve Koenig in Shanghai last week at CES Asia. He presented results of an online survey of 3,000 Chinese consumers along with half-hour conversations. Seventy-two percent had a smartphone that’s six months to two years old and 66 percent own a wearable that’s less than a year old, Koenig said. Fifty-seven percent said they replace their smartphone every two years and 63 percent plan to replace their wearable every two years, Koenig said. Forty-six percent buy a new smartphone to replace a non-working model, while 43 percent buy to upgrade to a newer model. In TV viewing, 36 percent of Chinese consumers spend their time watching live content, 20 percent view digital video files, 16 percent watch VOD, 10 percent view streamed content and 10 percent use a DVR, Koenig said. The cutoff age for predominantly live versus DVR content is 40, he said.

SHANGHAI -- An irony at the inaugural CES Asia was the repeated show messaging to “follow us on Twitter” in a country where Twitter as well as Facebook, Google and Instagram are blocked under the Chinese government’s policy of Internet censorship. If China doesn't allow use of social media, including Twitter, it's "clearly their right to do as a country,” CEA President Gary Shapiro told a CES Asia media briefing (see 1505260009).

Evoking a connected future where “everything that consumes electricity computes and communicates,” Intel Senior Vice President Kirk Skaugen outlined the future of Intel-powered devices and solutions. Skaugen spoke Monday at CES Asia in Shanghai of the PC being the “incubator” for technologies that “waterfall” to smaller and smaller devices due to miniaturization, increased processing power and “halved” manufacturing costs. Shaping the consumer electronics industry over the next five to 10 years are innovation in personal computing; creating new technology experiences by eliminating wiring and passwords; and buildout of the IoT. Skaugen cited the 50 billion connected devices expected to be in the market by 2020, where anything that can be made to compute and connect “will do so.” The results will benefit users’ lifestyle, health, safety and “many unimagined results,” while creating volumes of cloud-based data, he said. Intel’s version of “cord-cutting” means cutting out cords altogether, said Skaugen, citing the Rezence wireless charging standard and proximity-based peripheral syncing that will cut the cord between a monitor and a PC. This wire-free computing, based on WiGig, enables monitors to start up automatically when in proximity to a PC, he said. Intel’s vision by 2016, said Skaugen, is to “eliminate all wires from computing,” and that includes charging cables, data transfer and HDMI cables for convenience and e-waste reasons. Intel is working on new ways to interact with mobile devices including a facial or iris scan as a way to log in to a PC, said Skaugen.

It's a "shame" the U.S. government has restricted travel to trade shows like CES, where in the past attendance “was considered part of the job,” said CEA CEO Gary Shapiro in Shanghai on Sunday at the first CES Asia. He said CEA has had cooperation from the Chinese government that’s “very happy we’re here” and it wouldn’t be possible to hold CES Asia without its support because the government owns many of the companies and the media. Shapiro said CEA’s strong position on free trade can fall opposite of policies of China and other countries. CEA is very good at separating its role as an association representing U.S. companies and U.S. subsidiaries of global companies, he said. He marveled at Shanghai's infrastructure, including airports, mass transit and hotels, saying: “They’re doing something right here. The fact that they don’t allow Google and Twitter and Facebook and restrict the access of some companies is clearly their right to do as a country.” Espousing the value of an international trade show as a way to learn about other cultures, Shapiro said: “Anybody who thinks that their government has all the answers is probably wrong. I personally believe that if countries are trading, they’re less likely to be fighting.”

ADT unveiled partnerships Thursday with LG and Nest for the connected home space. At its investor day, CEO Naren Gursahaney pegged ADT’s share of the residential monitored security market at 27 percent, versus Comcast at 2 percent, and Time Warner Cable and AT&T at 1 percent each. ADT said it's opening its Pulse platform to third parties with the goal of making Pulse an “open standards-based framework for the secure connected world.” The company has developed new APIs (application programming interfaces) and upgrades to the Pulse platform hoping to accelerate application development, integration and support of third-party services and devices, it said. The upgrades will allow “greater focus and continuous improvements to the Pulse user experience" on mobile, tablet and other Web-enabled devices, it said. ADT Residential President Alan Ferber said the company expects the integration with Nest to drive higher interest in the company’s Pulse automation offering. “This is just the start,” he said, citing future opportunities and other new partnerships. ADT will continue to work with partners Ford Sync, iControl Networks, IF (formerly IFTTT), Intel Security and Life360, the company said. A coming new mobile app will provide a single “intuitive” user experience that’s consistent across smartphones, tablets and PCs as part of ADT’s effort to allow “seamless integration” with the company’s new partners, Ferber said. An activity detail “like a Facebook news feed” will display a running event history showing “how the system has been used, by whom and when,” he said.

With smartphones the third-most-owned consumer electronics product in the U.S., ownership of digital content is poised to surpass traditional content within the next few years, a CEA study said Monday. “A strong consumer appetite for mobile connected devices is causing some very interesting changes in the CE ownership landscape,” said Steve Koenig, CEA senior director-market research. Smartphones are owned by 72 percent of U.S. households -- an increase of 8 percentage points over 2014, he said. Tablets are in more than half of U.S. households and showed the largest increase in ownership growth over 2014, rising 9 percentage points, Koenig said. Laptops experienced the second-largest gain in household penetration, residing in 67 percent of households, he said. Basic cellphones saw the steepest category drop, to under 50 percent penetration, and fell out of the top 10 list for owned tech products, he said. Household penetration of digital media streaming devices rose 5 percentage points to 29 percent ownership and in-vehicle communication devices rose 4 percent to 34 percent ownership, CEA said. Digital content ownership grew 10 percentage points to 63 percent ownership, it said.

Harman will add a fourth division for services to join its Infotainment, Lifestyle and Pro divisions next quarter, Chief Financial Officer Sandra Rowland said at the Baird 2015 Growth Stock Conference in Chicago last week. Anchoring the new division is software engineering and integration services unit Symphony Teleca, which Harman recently purchased (see 1501220039) for a base price of $780 million. Symphony Teleca is “at the convergence of cloud, mobility and analytics,” all important areas for automotive and Harman's other target markets as the IoT gains what Rowland called a “tremendous amount of traction."