Work-from-home helped spark Slack new paid customer additions at a “faster rate” in June and July than in April and May, said CEO Stewart Butterfield on a quarterly call Tuesday. “That trend continued in August, even after the typical vacation-related slowdown for the month, indicating that paid customer additions are potentially finding a new baseline rate.” The quarter ended July 31. Slack experienced “some macro-related headwinds in the installed base," Butterfield said. Since it prices the service on a “per-seat basis,” when customers downsize, freeze hiring or hire more slowly, “net dollar retention is negatively impacted,” he said. Due to the “substantial number of smaller customers on monthly plans, it shows up much more quickly than it would for others in our industry,” he said. The stock closed 13.9% lower Wednesday at $25.24. There’s more “budget scrutiny” during COVID-19, “especially for new categories with longer adoption curves,” like videoconferencing, said Butterfield. Chief information officers “have a lot on their plates right now,” he said. The COVID-19 pandemic is having “positive and negative effects on our business,” he said. “The positive changes will have greater impact and will persist as part of this permanent structural shift in the way we work.” And “negative effects will dissipate as we emerge from the pandemic,” he said. Chief Financial Officer Allen Shim said less than 20% of its business is from industries “most directly impacted" and “while these represent a minority of our business, these higher-risk industries grew significantly slower in the first half versus non-impacted industries.”
The Z-Wave Allianceannounced a specification enabling quadruple the range and 10 times the devices that can operate on a network. Z-Wave Long Range is in testing by three companies and expected to be in beta in late Q4 or early Q1, alliance Executive Director Mitchell Klein told us Tuesday. General availability is expected late Q1, he said. The alliance, which was a subsidiary of Silicon Labs, announced its status as a nonprofit standards development organization Aug. 18. That opens development for the platform, Klein said: The alliance is “aggressively recruiting” for working groups “to take things beyond what one company could do in terms of resources.”
Sonos seeks an International Trade Commission “summary determination” it has satisfied the Tariff Act Section 337 import requirement on 19 models of Google devices that allegedly infringe five Sonos multiroom audio patents. “None of the underlying facts at issue are disputed,” said Sonos’ Aug. 27 motion (login required), posted Thursday in docket 337-TA-1191. Google “expressly stipulated” that it imported into the U.S. at least one unit of each allegedly infringing device, said Sonos. Google submitted copies of Customs and Border Protection Form 7501 “corresponding to at least one" import of each device since January 2019, it said. Granting the motion “will dramatically simplify the issues for trial, reducing the burden and costs of litigation on the private parties,” plus the ITC and its staff, said Sonos. The ITC opened its investigation Feb. 6 (see 2002060070). Sonos seeks an import ban on the allegedly infringing Google products.
“Build a bridge where you are,” Baltimore Union Baptist Church Pastor Alvin Hathaway told a NATOA virtual conference. Internet access is a social justice issue, he said. Lifeline and E-rate are “great at a national level,” but it’s important to think locally about how to expand internet, especially during a pandemic that exacerbated access problems for low-income families in his west Baltimore community, Hathaway said Wednesday. Through a federal contract and partnership with the Union Baptist Church, Project Waves will erect a tower Friday on the place of worship that will immediately provide free wireless internet to 250 families in a five- to seven-block radius, the pastor said. Those families’ routers can become hot spots to expand service farther into the community, he said. “The goal is to connect 1,000 households.”
Silicon Labs hardware and software got IoT security certifications from PSA Certified and the ioXt Alliance, said the company Wednesday. Its Secure Vault, a set of security features designed to guard against IoT security threats in connected devices, will be available in the company’s multiprotocol wireless SoCs, due Sept. 9, it said. The EFR32MG21B SoC is the first radio to get PSA Certified Level 2 accreditation for providing protection against scalable software attacks, said Andy Rose, chief system architect. Silicon Labs' xG22 Thunderbird and EFR32MG21B development kits got SmartCert security certification status from the ioXt Alliance. IoT security threats are “continuously evolving, and the demands on IoT product developers to keep up can be difficult -- particularly in low cost, resource-constrained IoT products,” said Matt Johnson, senior vice president-IoT. Customer data and cloud-based business models are “increasingly targeted for costly hacks, and IoT security requirements are quickly becoming law.”
"Video is the new voice," said Zoom CEO Eric Yuan on quarterly call Monday. "There's no reason for any business to deploy two separate systems." COVID-19 "completely accelerated" the digital transformation for "every enterprise," said Yuan. "You want to support employees no matter where they are, where the traditional on-prem[ises] system really is not applicable anymore." Demand for remote-work solutions remains high, as organizations “moved beyond addressing immediate business continuity needs” into strategizing for a post-pandemic future, said the corporate chief. Employers are “actively redefining and embracing new approaches to support a future of working anywhere, learning anywhere, and connecting anywhere,” said Yuan. Revenue soared 355% from the year-earlier quarter. New subscriptions were 81% of the growth, said Chief Financial Officer Kelly Steckelberg. “Demand remained at heightened levels, combined with lower than expected churn,” she said. “This demand was broad-based.” But small firms churned at a higher rate, the CFO said. The stock closed 41% higher Tuesday at $457.69.
U.S. communications networks weathered the pandemic and increased online traffic because of the huge investments providers made in those networks in recent years, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Tuesday. Those investments came in large part due to the FCC throttling back on regulation, Pai told the ITU's Global Symposium for Regulators, per prepared remarks. He said the pandemic makes clear more work is needed toward universal access to broadband, because access "is critical to being a full participant in today’s economy and society."
COVID-19 and recent Chinese government actions “coalesced long-standing Western concerns about China, focusing on self-sufficiency, national security, trade deficits, business ethics, and human rights,” reported the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Monday. Beijing likely will be “the biggest business disruptor of the 2020s, but the discussion about how to respond has yet to take shape,” said ITIF. “A strategic framework should rebalance the global supply chains, bolster competitiveness, adjust to China’s market size, and solidify the West’s appeal.” Though U.S.-China trade tensions could “defuse,” relations between the countries “increasingly look like a win-lose economic struggle that will test which nation is stronger and which is likely to prevail in specific industries,” it said. It sees the 2020s as likely the “decisive decade.”
Nearly three-quarters of U.S. consumers shopped more online during the pandemic, a healthinsurance.com survey found. The healthcare shopping website canvassed 1,600 online Aug. 6-7, finding 76% of millennials and 73% of Gen Xers used e-commerce more during lockdown. The prevalence of increased online shopping was lowest among baby boomers at 67%. The vast majority of consumers spend more time on their phones and computers. Increased tech use is higher among Gen Xers (75%) and millennials (74%) than boomers (65%). Americans 61%-39% say they need a “digital detox." The sentiment was strongest among boomers (78%), less so with millennials (51%). Gen Xers alone shunned the idea. Apple Watch is the wearable of choice among 25% of consumers, Fitbit at 23%. Consumers are evenly split between those who used telemedicine services during COVID-19 and those who didn’t. Americans by a 60% majority feel “more comfortable” about using telemedicine now than they were six months ago, and 54% plan to continue using it after the pandemic. Twenty-eight percent of consumers who binge-watch content prefer doing so on a nondescript smart TV over a Roku or Amazon Fire TV.
IQiyi said it’s cooperating with the SEC Enforcement Division as it seeks financial records dating to January 2018, after short-seller firm Wolfpack Research alleged April 7 the company, known as the Netflix of China, was “committing fraud well before” its initial public offering two years ago. IQiyi hired “professional advisers to conduct an internal review” into the allegations, it said Thursday. IQiyi parent Baidu has “zero tolerance for fraud,” said CEO Robin Li on a quarterly call. “When there is a short-seller for an issue against our subsidiary, especially one that's quite autonomous, it is important to get an independent opinion.” This “is part of good corporate governance, and we think this validation process is important to earn investors' trust,” he said. Li isn't involved in the review, he said: “With COVID-19 in the backdrop, one should expect this process to be longer than normal. In past cases without a pandemic, we have seen investigations lasting months and sometimes beyond a year.” IQiyi shares closed 11.2% lower Friday at $19.26. Baidu was down 6.3% at $116.74.