Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis developed a way to make “smart bricks” to store electricity for powering electronics devices, blogged the school, citing an Aug. 11 Nature article. Researchers converted red bricks, bought at Home Depot for 65 cents each, into a supercapacitor. “We have developed a coating of the conducting polymer PEDOT [poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)],” comprising nanofibers that “penetrate the inner porous network of a brick; a polymer coating remains trapped in a brick and serves as an ion sponge that stores and conducts electricity,” said Julio D’Arcy, assistant chemistry professor. The red pigment in bricks -- iron oxide -- is essential for triggering the polymerization reaction, he said. The authors calculate that walls made of energy-storing bricks could bank a substantial amount of energy. “A brick wall serving as a supercapacitor can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times within an hour,” said D’Arcy. “If you connect a couple of bricks, microelectronics sensors would be easily powered.” A proof of concept in the Nature article shows a brick directly powering a green LED.

Target shares reached a 52-week high Wednesday closing 12.7% higher at $154.22 after its strongest-ever quarter of same-store sales growth. Q2 comparable sales jumped 24.3% for the quarter ended Aug. 1. Stores fulfilled more than 90% of sales in the quarter, said CEO Brian Cornell. It had market share gains of $5 billion in the first half, with “unusually strong” gains across all five core categories. Cornell credited a differentiated merchandising assortment and convenient fulfillment options, on a Wednesday earnings call. Same-day services, including order pickup, drive up and Shipt, grew 273%, accounting for 6 points of comp sales growth. Store comps rose 10.9%, while digital comp sales surged 195%, comprising 13.4 points of total comp sales growth. Drive-up fulfillment grew fastest at 734%. To meet demand, Target is adding extra drive-up slots sooner than expected, from two to 12 additional parking lot spots, depending on stores’ needs, said Chief Operating Officer John Mulligan. Electronics sales shot up 70% due to increased shopping in office equipment, home electronics and gaming, said Cornell. Despite solid Q2 performance, Target is being cautious and “flexible” about back-to-school (BTS) and holiday season plans, he said. It announced plans to close on Thanksgiving for social distancing and safety, and to begin holiday promotions in October, he said. Target is extending BTS because 60% of students are learning remotely, and it’s not clear whether they will return to classrooms this fall or in January, Cornell said. At some point those students will need school supplies, he said, “so we’ve made the decision to be flexible." Despite strong Q2 results, volatility continues to be “elevated,” said Chief Financial Officer Michael Fiddelke. May was “by far the strongest month” with 33% comp growth, followed by June at 21%, and July at about 20%, he said. August month-to-date comp sales have been running in the low double digits, strong historically but an “incredibly wide swing within a few months,” he said. That’s an indicator of how difficult it is to forecast in the current climate, said Fiddelke: “Given that our Q1 performance was not a good predictor of our second quarter results, our Q2 results should not be viewed as a predictor of our performance going forward.” He didn’t provide Q3 or full-year guidance. Target paused new store openings in March but resumed construction, with plans to open 27 more stores this year. Nine are scheduled to open this month, 16-18 in October, said Mulligan.

Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) is seeing “promising evidence that a broad-based recovery is underway” from COVID-19, said CEO Vincent Roche on a fiscal Q3 earnings call Wednesday: “We recognize that the recovery is highly dependent on the future impacts of the pandemic.” The quarter ended Aug. 1. As ADI progressed through the quarter, “we saw stronger than anticipated demand,” plus fewer cancellations and “higher than anticipated backlog conversion,” said Chief Financial Officer Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah. Business-to-business revenue in the quarter was up 11% sequentially from fiscal Q2, he said. Growth was flat year over year, “as strength across industrial and communications offset a sharp decline in automotive,” he said. Communications was 25% of quarterly revenue and was up 14% year over year, said Mahendra-Rajah. ADI had double-digit increases in its wireless and wireline “end markets,” he said: “This strength came from our leadership position in 5G wireless systems and our solid position in optical connectivity used in carrier networks and data centers.” Q3 automotive revenue fell 29% from the 2019 quarter, “with all applications declining due to global factory shutdowns and lower vehicle sales” during the pandemic, said Mahendra-Rajah. Though no company is “immune” from COVID-19, revenue from growing adoption of ADI’s automotive audio bus infotainment platform is up more than 70% “year to date, despite lower vehicle sales,” he said. Revenue in ADI’s consumer business was down 13% from a year earlier, said Mahendra-Rajah. “Relatively flat” revenue from sales of components in portable devices “was more than offset by double-digit declines in prosumer, due to the pandemic-related softness,” he said. “We continue to expect 2020 to be the bottom for our consumer business.” Roche has been in the communications business a long time, dating to the “inception of 2G,” said the CEO in Q&A. “The patterns we’re seeing in 5G are no different than what we saw in 2G, 3G or 4G,” he said. The story of 5G has been about “giving more bandwidth to the consumer,” said Roche. “The future is about B2B, more so, than the consumer. We’re beginning to see the early adoption of 5G in the factory automation area. In fact, I have verified that with some of our industrial automation customers.”

LG is shipping a 27-inch UltraGear gaming monitor, a 4K in-plane-switching model with 1-millisecond gray to gray latency. The 27GN950 ($799), with Nvidia G-Sync compatibility and an AMD FreeSync Premium Pro processor, has a 144 Hz refresh rate, 10-bit color and VESA Display Stream Compression technology. It has RGB Sphere Lighting 2.0 to match with the sounds and visuals in the game, said LG.

NPD forecasts Q4 consumer tech sales will rise 18% from the 2019 quarter, about twice the level of increase of NPD predictions made at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stephen Baker, vice president-technology, told an NPD webinar Wednesday. NPD projects tech sales in first-half 2021 will increase 10% over the comparable 2019, disavowing 2020 as a comparative “baseline” due to the year’s volatility, he said. “While we don’t expect lines of people waiting on Black Friday,” it’s reasonable to expect “lines of cars,” said Baker. About 36% of online sales in Q2 were buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) transactions, he said. Baker expects “incremental growth” in BOPIS over Thanksgiving weekend, he said. Baker isn't worried that the extraordinary volume of tech sales occurring during the pandemic is “pull-in” demand that will diminish holiday spending later in the year, he said. “In an environment where demand is infinite, pull-in doesn’t really make any difference,” he said. “We keep worrying about this, but the demand remains there. We’re seeing 20% revenue growth every single month for the last five months. Even if that demand is being pulled in, there’s demand behind it.” That’s one of the reasons “we are increasingly bullish” about the holiday outlook, said Baker. “Anybody who knows me knows I was pretty bearish in the early part of this. Our thought process has evolved over time.” The 18% increase NPD expects for Q4 tech revenue growth is an “historic-type number,” he said. “There remains a huge amount of unmet demand that obviates the challenges around pull-in and gives an enormous base to work against.” E-commerce was 70% of consumer tech revenue at the end of Q2, said Baker. That’s about 20 percentage points higher than it was at the beginning of 2020, he said. “Certainly we’re not going to stay there,” but it’s likely that online as a percentage of tech sales will “permanently” stay above 60%, he said.

Prime Day-esque deals on Amazon devices this week are part of the e-commerce giant’s Ready for School event, a spokesperson emailed. “We regularly offer customers new deals, including deals on Amazon Devices,” she said. Current deals are “unrelated to Prime Day,” which will be in Q4, she said.

Consumer tech retail sales exceeded a record $2.2 billion in the week ended Aug. 8, up 34% from the comparable 2019 week, reported Stephen Baker, NPD vice-president-technology industry adviser. July revenue increased 18% year over year, even against the tough comparison with the July 2019 Amazon Prime Day event (see 1907150062), emailed Baker Tuesday. Amazon’s chief financial officer said recently that Prime Day 2020 will be in Q4 (see 2007310023). The back-to-school frenzy is in “full swing,” said Baker, and sales of “productivity-focused” products “have picked back up,” with PCs “fueling much of the growth.” Laptop revenue was up 64% in the week ended Aug. 8 from the same 2019 week, he said. Dollar sales in other connectivity goods also soared “as preparations for distance learning drive sales of a slightly altered set of products for Back to School,” he said. PC headset revenue was up 127% from a year earlier, and monitors and routers jumped 97% and 87% in revenue, respectively, said Baker.

Customers who buy select Apple products will get extended trial offers for Apple services, the Best Buy e-commerce site showed Monday. Offers are available to new customers only. IPad customers can get “hundreds” of magazines and newspapers via Apple News+ for four months. The subscription automatically renews for $9.99 per month after trial until canceled. Similar Apple Music four-month free trials are being offered with a wide range of products including MacBook Air laptops, the Apple Pencil, Lightning-to-3.5mm headphone adapters, Apple Watch and AirPod Pro earbuds. Monthly Apple Music subscriptions are $5 for students, $10 for individuals and $15 for families. Bloomberg reported last week that Apple is readying services bundles for launch this fall (see 2008130029).

Fitbit’s premium membership service passed 500,000 subscribers since its launch in August 2019, said the company Monday. The service gives users data, actionable insights, “hundreds” of workouts, games and challenges, sleep tools and wellness reports, it said. The app-based service expects to add seven languages this year.

Until the Wireless Speaker & Audio Association reached “critical mass” at retail with certified products in the U.S., Europe and Asia, it wasn’t “cost-effective” to do “more aggressive” marketing to sow broader WiSA consumer awareness and generate business leads, said Brett Moyer, CEO of WiSA backer Summit Wireless Technologies, on a quarterly call Thursday. “We are at critical mass,” he said. “This now lets us run” WiSA consumer campaigns to divert the leads it develops to individual stores or e-commerce sites, he said. WiSA expects the 100,000 visitors to its website in Q3 (see 2008030055) will be “high-value consumers for somebody that’s marketing a WiSA product,” said Moyer. This will be a “continuous project” for WiSA, one that “we will be talking about” for years, he said.