Amazon customers bought “tens of millions” Fire TV Sticks and Echo Dots, said Thursday's Q4 earnings release. Sales jumped 38 percent to $60.5 billion, with net income of $1.9 billion vs. $749 million. The company exceeded “very optimistic” projections and “expect us to double down,” said CEO Jeff Bezos. He said it's “an important point” that other companies and developers are “accelerating adoption of Alexa.” The company is seeing strong response to its new far-field voice kit for manufacturers, he said. Shares Friday closed up 3 percent to $1,429.95.

The FTC is reviewing a request from Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee leaders to probe social media marketing firm Devumi's activities, a spokeswoman said Thursday. Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and ranking member Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., seek investigation amid reports Devumi “sells a panoply of social media actions, including followers,” on Twitter and other platforms. Devumi claims to “help clients increase their social media presence” but “in reality, the company allegedly uses bots to create fake social media accounts,” the senators wrote acting FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen. Those activities constitute a “unique kind of social identity theft” that could mean it's “engaged in unfair or deceptive practices,” grounds for an investigation under FTC Act Section 5, the senators said. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) also promised to investigate whether Devumi engaged in unlawful “impersonation and deception.” The company didn't comment.

Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood is asking Facebook to scrap its Messenger Kids app aimed at preteens. In a letter released Tuesday, CCFC said Messenger Kids, likely to be widely used by elementary school children, could "undermine ... healthy development" since youths "are simply not ready to have social media accounts." It said the app is likely to increase the amount of time spent by children on digital devices, but social media use by teens is linked to depression and overall dissatisfaction with life. In a statement Wednesday, Facebook said Messenger Kids is intended to be a messaging app between parents and children, "with parents always in control of their child’s contacts and who they can message." It said since December launch, "We’ve heard from parents around the country that Messenger Kids has helped them stay in touch with their children and has enabled their children to video chat with fun masks with family members near and far." It said it used an advisory committee of parenting and developmental experts, as well as family and National PTA feedback, when creating the app. "There is no advertising in Messenger Kids," it said.

Silicon Labs' buy of Sigma Designs took a detour when Sigma failed to sell its TV business, said Silicon Chief Financial Officer John Hollister on a Wednesday earnings call. The takeover (see 1712180058) is now structured as an “asset transaction” for $240 million, subject to Sigma shareholder OK, the buyer said last week. The deal could bring a “breakthrough in smart home device interoperability,” blogged Futuresource analyst Filipe Oliveira Wednesday, boosting the growing $6 billion smart home industry. Silicon Labs CEO Tyson Tuttle pegged current IoT market revenue at $8 billion, rising to $13 billion in the next five years. Silicon Labs/Sigma could solve the interoperability problem caused by a “proliferation” of protocols like Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and DECT-ULE, he said. Z-Wave is the primary standard used by security and monitoring systems and is used by Yale, ADT and Comcast’s Xfinity Home. The buyer also reported Q4 sales rose to $201 million from $183 million in the 2016 quarter on a $4.8 million loss vs. $20 million profit.

Sonos’ closing of its New York flagship store for Sunday to show support for net neutrality on a day the music industry gathered in town for the 60th Annual Grammy Awards was an “opportunity to be bold and make an action-oriented statement that aligns so strongly with our values,” a spokeswoman said Monday. The FCC voted to repeal net neutrality rules in December (see 1712140039). Music “drives everything we do but unfortunately, music faces mounting threats in today’s world,” said the representative. “Too many artists encounter barriers when it comes to free expression and access to information. Communities lack space and resources to ensure all musicians can be heard.” She referenced Sonos’ Listen Better initiative, launched in the fall, committing $1.5 million in grants over three years to fund grassroots organizations working to promote the future of music. A sign on the closed Sonos storefront said: “If we let net neutrality get stripped away, powerful gatekeepers could stifle creativity and hold back tomorrow’s talent.”

Intel has been working “around the clock” with customers and partners to resolve the Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities (see 1801050050) that can let hackers retrieve sensitive information through design flaws in processors, said CEO Brian Krzanich on a Thursday earnings call. Though progress has been made in tackling the threats, “I'm acutely aware that we have more to do,” he said. Intel’s “near-term focus” is on delivering “high-quality mitigations” to protect against the Spectre and Meltdown “exploits,” he said. Products incorporating “silicon-based” solutions to the threats will begin appearing later this year, he said. Intel is “approaching this work with customer-first urgency,” said Krzanich: “I've assigned some of the very best minds at Intel to work through this.”

Sonos will launch the limited-time “Sonos Two” bundle Friday, offering two voice-enabled Sonos One speakers, regularly $199 each, for $349, it said in a Thursday announcement. That’s the same price as one Apple HomePod, which goes on preorder Friday, ahead of Feb. 9 availability (see 1801230058). Apple pushed Apple Music integration in its Tuesday HomePod news release. The bundle announcement coincided with an ad Sonos ran in The New York Times Thursday headlined “Freedom of Choice.” The full-page ad shows a Sonos One speaker with logos of nine music services: Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Apple Music, SiriusXM, TuneIn and Tidal. Copy for the ad reads: “Big Tech wants to lock you into one music service. We think what you listen to should be up to you. That’s why we support over 80 music services, more than any other smart speaker system.” The announcement said Sonos has always been agnostic about sources of music and audio available for its speakers and said the company is “doing the same with voice assistants, preferring to stay open-minded and let listeners make the choices.” On whether Sonos would work with Siri or Bixby voice assistants in the future, a spokeswoman said the company is “always looking to add more voice partners.” On the timing of the Times ad, she said: “With several conversations around smart speakers, the ad calls out a trend where we are seeing big tech try to lock people into a single ecosystem.” She repeated Sonos’ agnosticism with music services and said Sonos has “always been about creating a home sound system to fill any room with your favorite music and content, not just a single speaker.” Sonos is continuing to work on Google Assistant and AirPlay 2 integration for later this year, she said.

Data privacy concerns are slowing sales cycles for up to 65 percent for businesses globally, with an average estimated delay of 7.8 weeks, Cisco reported. Enforcement of EU’s general data protection regulation to begin in May might be a factor, the study said, noting customers are increasingly concerned products and services they buy provide appropriate privacy protections. GDPR provisions apply to any company that processes, stores or uses this data. Also Thursday, the Identity Theft Resource Center and CyberScout reported U.S. data breaches in 2016 hit a record high of 1,093, a 40 percent gain over 2015. That could be partially attributed to better data breach notification reporting by states, said CEO Eva Velasquez.

As the need grows for “complex, differentiated" uses for wearables, so will the devices’ size and weight increase, causing discomfort, reported Strategy Analytics Wednesday. It said hardware design “is one of the most obstructive factors for wearable devices because it inhibits what they can actually do.” Even smart earbuds and headset features "are inhibited by their short battery life and dependency on a smartphone,” said SA.

U.S. broadband households have average 9.1 connected devices, putting increasing demands on networks, Parks data show, with sales of such devices seen reaching 442 million by 2020. More than 60 percent of such households received their router from their ISP, the researcher reported Wednesday. If a household with five accounts streamed HD video simultaneously, it would need at least 30 Mbps for optimal viewing, said the report done for Calix. The average connection is 18.7 Mbps, Akamai finds, and Cisco forecasts consumer VOD traffic will nearly double by 2021, said Parks. Streaming media use strains home networks: nearly 70 percent of U.S. households subscribe to at least one over-the-top service, the firm said. In the past year, 37 percent of U.S. broadband households reported “slow” Wi-Fi networks, and nearly a fifth of consumers said their Wi-Fi network stops working “almost weekly.” The rapidly growing installed base of devices creates opportunities for MVPD support for premium Wi-Fi performance, universal support for IoT devices and data security from edge devices to the cloud, said Parks.