Year-on-year online spending growth slowed on Halloween to 11%, totaling $1.7 billion, vs. 32% growth on average the week before, emailed Adobe Analytics Monday. E-commerce picked up Sunday with 34% growth to $2.3 billion on what Adobe records as the first day of the U.S. holiday sales season. The analytics firm predicts online sales of $16.3 billion during election week, through Saturday, with a slowing of 11% and a drop of $300 million Wednesday compared with the full week. Online sales dropped off 14% the day after the 2016 election and 6% after the 2018 midterm election, it said. Some 63% of retailers believe consumers will be more confident in spending after the election; 26% of consumers said the election outcome will affect their holiday spending. Adobe predicts U.S. online holiday sales will total a record $189 billion (see 2010280026), a 33% year-on-year increase. If consumers receive another round of stimulus checks, or physical stores need to shut down in large parts of the country, consumers are expected to spend an additional $11 billion online, surpassing $200 billion.

Eighty percent of the global industrial IoT market, worth $216 billion, will be attributable to software spending by 2025, emailed Juniper Monday. IIoT connections will rise from 17.7 billion this year to 36.8 billion, led by 22 billion smart manufacturing connections, said the research firm. 5G networks will be key to growth, used to transmit large volumes of data in areas with high connection density. 5G and low-power wide-area networks will help enable the smart factory concept, in which real-time data transmission and high connection densities allow autonomous operations for manufacturers, it said.

Google remains committed to “investing to build the most helpful, most trusted search experience,” said CEO Sundar Pichai Thursday about DOJ’s Oct. 20 lawsuit over Google’s alleged monopoly in general search services and search advertising (see 2010200058). “We believe that our products are creating significant consumer benefits and will confidently make our case,” said Pichai on a Q3 investor call. “Our company's focus remains on continuing our work to build a search product that people love and value.” Google is “not new” to regulatory “scrutiny,” said the CEO. “What's in our control is our ability to relentlessly focus on users and build great products, and that's where most of our energy will go.” The DOJ lawsuit (see 2010300027) is in its “early days, and we're still reviewing and understanding it all,” he said. “I'm sure we'll update more as time goes by.”

DOJ can’t yet say whether additional states will join and expand the scope of an antitrust case against Google, DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Friday. Judge Amit Mehta held a status conference between DOJ and Google, in which the two sides established several filing dates. There’s “nothing concrete one way or another that I could speak about publicly at this time,” said Dintzer. “I don’t want to answer the court that I don’t know, but I don’t have anything concrete enough for me to provide a public answer on that.” Democratic state attorneys general have suggested they could join the case (see 2010200058). Mehta set a Nov. 6 deadline for the two sides to file status reports on a protective order in the case, a Nov. 13 deadline for the defense to indicate whether it plans to move to dismiss or answer DOJ’s complaint, and a Nov. 20 deadline for initial disclosures. The parties agreed to a Nov. 18 status conference to follow up on Friday’s items. Mehta disclosed a few of his relationships relevant to the case: His first cousin works as a Google engineer, and a close friend previously worked as a Google executive. Mehta doesn’t see them as conflicting or problematic, so he won't recuse himself from the case. Google is eager to review DOJ investigative materials, said Google attorney John Schmidtlein, who requested a Nov. 13 deadline for initial disclosures. The material will help the company formulate a discovery plan, said Schmidtlein. Google remains committed to “investing to build the most helpful, most trusted search experience,” CEO Sundar Pichai said Friday (see 2010300021).

Target is pulling Black Friday forward beginning Sunday, with the first of a series of weeklong sales running throughout the month, it said Thursday. In a “completely new approach to Black Friday,” it’s expanding its price match guarantee so customers “don’t need to worry about sacrificing savings if they shop early.” Nov. 1-Dec. 24, customers can request a price adjustment for any item advertised as a “Black Friday Now” deal if it's offered for a lower price at Target or Target.com later in the season.

Many over-the-top video offerings are “seeing substantial success” during the pandemic, said Akamai CEO Tom Leighton on a Q3 call Tuesday evening. “Some are doing better than others, but I do think OTT is here to stay.” As people view more content online, “that becomes more of the pattern and that will outlive the pandemic,” he said. “We'd all like to get back to a world when you can go out and see a movie,” but that’s not likely to happen “anytime soon,” he said. Akamai’s Asavie buy, announced Tuesday, will “complement” its security product lines with a “cellular-specific” security offering, “an important step in our strategy to capture the emerging opportunity in 5G,” said Leighton. “Deployment of 5G and IoT applications can provide significant opportunities for Akamai.” The impact of 5G on innovation will be “similar to the way broadband enabled new social networking apps that few could have imagined before,” he said. “As 5G networks come online, we believe that end users and connected devices will demand faster performance and greater scale than cloud data centers can provide.” The stock closed 8.7% lower Wednesday at $97.40.

Dialog Semiconductor's DA7280 high-definition haptics driver is being used by Alps Alpine with its linear resonant actuators for interactive experiences in vehicles, Dialog said Wednesday. This addresses a growing trend in the automotive industry for dynamic control panels that use haptics for immediate driver feedback, it said. The combination creates a vibrational force that's said to be 10 times that generated by smartphones.

The California Public Utilities Commission scheduled a three-part overhaul of the California Advanced Services Fund. The CPUC will first consider “the most time-sensitive issues,” including how to complement CASF with federal Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support and data submission requirements, said a scoping memo by Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves posted Monday. The commission plans to propose an RDOF decision Nov. 13 and vote in December, then propose a data decision Jan. 4 and vote in February, it said. A second phase would follow on “near-term program refinements.” CPUC staff plans to issue second-phase proposals in January, then the commission would issue a proposed decision in April and vote in May. Phase 3, starting in the second half of 2021, might include changes to several other CASF programs. The commission expects to propose a third-phase decision by the end of next year and vote in early 2022, the memo said.

Holiday demand is likely to tax Amazon’s fulfillment, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter wrote investors Monday. “We expect to see signs of strain, with some third parties likely to shift warehousing during the holidays to other online vendors,” said Pachter, calling it a “high class problem” with overall online holiday demand expected to "set records.” Amazon’s Holiday Dash deals began Oct. 16, earlier than 2019, when sales didn’t begin until its Black Friday deals week Nov. 22-29. Earlier holiday sales, the Prime Day shift to October, and likely share shift toward e-commerce spend from brick-and-mortar locations this year “all position Amazon to perform exceedingly well over the holiday period." Wedbush expects Amazon’s Q3 revenue to be at or above the high end of guidance -- $87 billion to $93 billion -- when the company reports earnings after U.S. market close Thursday. “Substantial revenue upside is likely,” said the analyst: Wedbush estimates 2020 Prime Day sales of roughly $6.1 billion, some 25% growth over its 2019 estimate of about $4.9 billion. In Q4, Amazon will "likely leave ample room to beat" despite another "record Prime Day and expected share gains for ecommerce over the holidays.” Amazon Web Services, Fulfillment by Amazon and ads should drive margin expansion, with Prime memberships driving overall retail revenue growth, Pachter said.

Enable portable operations in the 6 GHz band for immersive 5G services, Broadcom, Intel and Microsoft asked FCC Office of Engineering and Technology staff. “Enable communication between client devices when they are within range of an authorized 6 GHz Low Power Indoor Access Point,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 18-295. “The record clearly demonstrates that such operations would not increase the risk of harmful interference because clients would operate at the same power level as a client device communicating with the nearby access point … and only within that access point’s service area.” Commissioners may vote on changes in December (see 2010190040).