Best Buy CEO Corie Barry sidestepped our questions during her Northern Virginia Technology Council video chat Wednesday (see report, July 30 issue) about how the pandemic was affecting consumer demand for more discretionary tech products like premium TVs. “We haven’t talked about that publicly,” she said. “About a trillion dollars of spend” last year went to sporting events, movies, cruises and vacations, she said. “A minuscule amount of that is being spent right now. Spending is moving into other buckets because of the way we are living our lives. I just think the idea of what might be discretionary and not will evolve over time because we’re living our lives in a way that is completely unique to anything that has come before.”

Qualcomm is leaving unchanged its pre-COVID forecast that smartphone OEMs will ship 175 million to 225 million 5G handsets this year, said CEO Steve Mollenkopf on a Q2 call Wednesday. Launches across all regions “remain on track,” but “we expect some minor changes to the launch timing and sell-through of certain devices,” said Chief Financial Officer Akash Palkhiwala. A "few regions” are experiencing “minor delays” in network deployments, said Mollenkopf. Stay-at-home mandates “highlight the critical role” broadband plays, he noted: The “mission” to deploy “breakthrough wireless technologies like 5G has been reinforced and amplified.” The stock closed 15.2% higher Thursday at $107.19. Global smartphone shipments declined by about 21% in Q2, said Mollenkopf. He's encouraged Chinese smartphone demand recovered “month over month” in Q2 after the “sharp decrease” in Q1 “coinciding with COVID-19 restrictions,” he said. “This provides a basis to model rest-of-world handset demand trends.” Without that rebound, Q2 smartphone demand would have been down 30%, he said. Nearly three-quarters of new smartphone models introduced this year in China are 5G, said President Cristiano Amon: China is poised for “broad penetration."

A record-high 71% of U.S. homes were using content streaming or download services when canvassed July 24-26, said CTA Thursday. Nearly one in 10 booked telehealth appointments or other online health services, it said: “Different types of streaming and download services remain a primary way for households to stay entertained during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially as some live sports return to TV, notable new albums drop and exciting video games release.”

CEOs think businesses will emerge from the pandemic “using more contract workers and fewer permanent staff,” and videoconferencing will replace much business travel, reported the Conference Board Thursday. It canvassed more than 1,300 CEOs globally, finding only 47% predicting pre-COVID-19 revenue levels return sometime in 2021. Chief executives think the crisis “will compel them to accelerate their digital transformation plans and rethink their business models” but don’t see an urgent need to restructure their supply chains, it said. Flexible work schedules will the biggest change emerging from the pandemic, it said. Permanently increasing the number of employees who can work remotely will be the second biggest.

Dolby quarterly revenue may fall 22% year over year on COVID-19 effects including “on production volumes and the worldwide shutdown of the exhibition business,” forecast Dougherty & Co.'s Steven Frankel. Nevertheless, the analyst noted its application programming interface strategy is “beginning to take shape,” citing deployments by SoundCloud and others. Dolby didn't comment Thursday ahead of Monday's report.

Some 83% of consumers who use such services had their most recent telehealth visit at least partially paid by insurance, said Parks Associates Thursday. In the past 12 months, 41% of U.S. broadband households used a telehealth service, nearly tripling year over year, it said. The pandemic pushed virtual solutions “to the forefront of healthcare,” said President Elizabeth Parks: Sweeping regulatory changes and changing consumer preferences on remote vs. in-person care created “an enormous shift."

PayPal rode the pandemic’s e-commerce spike to its “strongest quarter” since eBay spun it off as an independent public company five years ago, said CEO Dan Schulman on a Q2 investor call Wednesday evening. “Merchants are embracing a digital-first strategy, and these trends have fueled the rapid rise of digital payments. These are durable and meaningful tailwinds.” Q2 transactions grew 26% to 3.7 billion, “rivaling the volumes that we usually experience during the five days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday,” said Schulman. PayPal added 21.3 million new customers, a 140% increase from the 2019 quarter, he said. “Net new actives” in Q2 exceeded the number of new customers added in all of 2016, he said. PayPal ended the quarter with 346 million active accounts, he said. “Given our momentum, I believe that we will add approximately 70 million net new actives this year.” PayPal is seeing “a tremendous amount of new cohorts coming in that have never used e-commerce before,” he said. Seniors are “the fastest-growing segment of net new actives,” he said. The stock closed 4.3% higher Thursday at $192.51.

“Size and sophistication” of online attacks “has risen dramatically” with the pandemic’s spike in internet traffic, said Akamai CEO Tom Leighton on a Tuesday investor call: “Threat actors” are taking advantage of the “distraction and vulnerabilities created by employees working remotely.” Malware reports to Akamai jumped nearly fivefold in Q2 from the previous quarter, he said. Nearly half the content on a typical website “originates from third parties,” estimated Leighton. “Attackers are embedding malware in this content to steal users’ credit cards and other personal data.” Theft of login credentials “is another growing problem,” he said. “We blocked more than 53 billion credential abuse attempts last quarter, more than four times the number we saw in Q2 of last year.” Demand for the company's media and security services “more than offset” revenue downturns from the travel and hotel industries and other sectors “hit hardest by the pandemic,” said Leighton: Churn “stayed below 1% of annualized revenue.” Chief Financial Officer Ed McGowan estimated Akamai took a $14 million Q2 hit from COVID-19, mainly through “contract restructurings and elevated bad debt reserves.” A 13% revenue gain and 29% profit increase reflected a “continuation of the high traffic levels” on the internet since the onset of the pandemic, said Leighton. Peak traffic exceeded 100 terabits daily, he said. “That’s a lot of traffic.”

Imax plans to have 1,400 screens in 70 markets open by August for Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster Tenet, said CEO Rich Gelfond Tuesday on a Q2 call. After three delays due to COVID-19, Warner Bros. said also Tuesday the movie will release in Canada, Europe and Asia Aug. 26 and in limited U.S. theaters Sept. 3. “The rising infection rate in the U.S. and other markets stands in stark contrast to the opening of large international markets, where we derive over 70% of our revenue,” said Gelfond: “The U.S. presents a unique challenge for industry that is accustomed to global releases.” Staggered releases by country are “the next best thing,” he said. “We should expect some temporary setbacks in some markets.” In July, some 624 Imax screens were open, 40% of the company’s global 1,500-theater network; 10% of North America’s 400 Imax theaters are open, primarily in Canada. Masks are “absolutely critical” in theaters, said Gelfond. Social distancing capacity constraints and traffic flow can be managed effectively, show times can be staggered and food prep can be visible or food can be prepackaged, he said. Gelfond predicts the market will move toward premium experiences and blockbusters. On Imax's concern about narrowing theatrical windows -- after AMC's and Universal’s announcement Tuesday giving AMC 17 days of theatrical exclusivity for releases before going to premium VOD -- Gelfond said he sees little impact. With AMC potentially sharing in streaming revenue, “we have to wait to hear what other exhibitors say, what that means,” said Gelfond. Noting Universal doesn’t have a big movie coming out in North America until 2021, “we all have to take a breath,” said the executive. Imax revenue plunged 92% year on year in Q2 to $8.9 million. Shares closed down 10.7% Wednesday at $11.22.

Congressional Broadcasters Caucus co-Chairs Reps. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., and Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., are pressing to include language in the next COVID-19 aid bill to make broadcasters and other local outlets eligible for the Small Business Administration-administered Paycheck Protection Program. The House passed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act (HR-6800) in May with such a provision (see 2005180056). Proposals Senate Republicans released earlier this week contain no similar language (see 2007280059). Boyle and Emmer noted language from the Local News and Emergency Information Act (HR-6897/S-3718), which mirrors HR-6800 on media PPP eligibility (see 2005130059). The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (Cares) Act enacted in March (see 2003260063) gave “hotels, restaurants, and others … the ability to count their employees for the purpose of the PPP by individual location rather than as part of their ownership groups,” the lawmakers said Tuesday in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the chambers’ minority leaders. “These are precisely the business partners who have been forced to drop their advertising." Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., led a letter to McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Health Committee leaders urging them to include the Public Health Emergency Privacy Act’s language in the next aid measure.