Control4 CEO Martin Plaehn countered analysts’ views at an investor conference last week suggesting recent volatility in Control4 shares is due to larger do-it-yourself smart home players -- Amazon, in particular -- dialing up the volume on smart home advertising. "More and more products are becoming connected, and some of those products will be aftermarket products” that consumers can buy online or through retailers, but those are in a “different category from where we are,” he said. Control4 provides a connected infrastructure for the home, Plaehn said. Customers who try to tackle the smart home by themselves could become frustrated when commands don’t result in a desired response, said Plaehn, describing a scenario where a customer tells a device to raise the temperature and nothing happens. “Is Amazon going to come out and fix your heating system?” The average Control4 home has 41 devices, he said. The company’s open platform “interoperates with everybody,” the executive said, citing the 12,000 third-party products that integrate with its Simple Device Discovery Protocol. That’s different from companies that sell $99-$200 smart home hubs and say to the consumer: “Go figure it out,” he said. Control4 traded at a 52-week high of $37.62 in July; shares closed Monday at $20.
The virtual reality market has reached a “mobile fork in the road,” said ABI Research. Though 2018 tethered and stand-alone VR shipments are expected to exceed those of previous years, “mobile VR has taken a distant back seat,” it said Wednesday. The consumer space “has entered a malaise and some within the content and video workflow space have tempered expectations,” it said. Mobile gaming “is a massive market due to its significant user base that VR has not yet tapped into in a significant way,” said ABI. “Without a large mobile VR user base, consumer-centric developers will focus on the premium side of the spectrum, where users are less price sensitive and generate more revenue per user.”
Bose is taking preorders for its first augmented reality glasses. Bose’s concept for an open-air audio AR headset was compelling to the headphone maker, Mehul Trivedi, director-Bose Frames, told us. “As we think about what we want the world to look like, this idea of a heads-up, hands-free universe is something we think could be really revolutionary.” Shipping for the sunglass-style $199 Frames is slated for next month, and compatible AR apps are due next year, said the company.
Qualcomm took the wraps off its Snapdragon 855 mobile platform for 5G wireless networks. The platform supports 5G for sub-6 GHz and millimeter-wave bands, it said. The 802.11ay-based platform supports up to 10 Gbps Wi-Fi and beefs up support for TrueWireless Stereo Plus for headset and hearables by optimizing for low latency between left and right earbuds. Lower power consumption allows longer listening time between battery charges. Phones for the first time can play back HDR10+ content, and improved H.265 and VP9 decoding efficiencies will enable longer viewing times per charge, it said. Video capture supports 4K 60 HDR10, HDR10+ and Hybrid Log Gamma with portrait mode (bokeh), 10-bit color depth and Rec. 2020 color gamut. Chipsets are sampling with commercial availability slated for first half 2019.
Sonos’ partnership with Ikea is a look at the future of home speaker integration, CEO Patrick Spence told a Raymond James investors conference Tuesday. It’s working with the home furnishings company on products that leverage Sonos technology and the tech company’s software platform. The attraction for Ikea is Sonos’ ability to connect across the big tech companies “because you shouldn’t be trapped in one ecosystem,” Spence said. Ikea did well in smart lighting taking the same approach, he said. Ikea recently demoed a shelf that “fills a room with sound,” to give an idea of what’s possible with the Sonos relationship, he said. The executive underscored Ikea’s strength is furniture and Sonos technology will create “new ways to make sound from interesting products,” rather than inexpensive copycat products. Sonos is selling Ikea an SoC, which will allow Ikea customers to control music with the Sonos app from products Spence presented as “Sonos inside.” The hope is to then sell those customers “another Sonos product” and add on over time. The Ikea relationship, coming in 2019, is part of an international expansion to more countries; today five countries generate 80 percent of Sonos sales, Spence said.
Eighty-three percent of smart TV owners connect their set to the internet, up from 70 percent four years ago, Parks Associates reported Tuesday. Smart TV ownership grew from 34 to 53 percent. “Rise of direct-to-consumer offerings and the blurring of lines between pay-TV and [over the top] are leading to increased fragmentation in the viewing experience, where consumers are having to face complex self-curating systems,” said Anthony Smith-Chaigneau, Nagra senior director-product marketing, ahead of a Parks video conference in Marina del Rey, California, next week. Service providers should embrace the cloud, act as aggregators and leverage data, he said.
Verizon and Samsung will unveil a “proof of concept” 5G smartphone at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Technology Summit in Maui, Hawaii, this week, with plans to bring a 5G phone to market in first-half 2019, the companies said Monday. The prototype is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile platform, the X50 5G NR modem and antenna modules with integrated RF transceiver, RF front-end and antenna elements. Verizon, which launched its 5G Home service in October in some cities (see 1810010028), said 5G mobility service will go live early in 2019 and “expand rapidly.” Samsung, the first company to gain FCC approval for 5G commercial products, partnered with Verizon on its 5G Home since early this year, and worked with the carrier to develop fifth-generation standards, they said.
Apple Music comes to Amazon Echo Dec. 17, blogged Amazon Friday, so those with the subscriptions can ask Alexa to stream radio stations based on genre and by songs, album and artist. Music is one of the most popular features on Alexa, said Dave Limp, senior vice president-Amazon Devices. Other music services available to Echo users include iHeartRadio. In its first report Thursday, Sonos named Amazon, Apple and Google as competitors.
January CES will feature a "whole new” exhibit area “focused on resilience,” CTA President Gary Shapiro told the American Legislative Exchange Council Thursday (see 1811290015). “Say what you want about whether you believe in climate change or not, but the fact is people are facing more challenges in terms of their environment,” he said. “More things are happening.” The two-hour Las Vegas Convention Center blackout last CES (see 1801110030) “incentivized” CTA's decision on resilience, as did an executive board meeting in Napa Valley held “in the dark,” he said. “Cold coffee, no telephone service and no electricity,” he said. “That’s when I decided we had to focus on resilience and redundancy a little bit.”
Thanksgiving was the most mobile of the high-profile shopping days over the past week, blogged comScore Thursday. Mobile shopping’s share of total digital commerce reached 40 percent on Thanksgiving, continuing a trend from last year, wrote analyst Ian Essling, while in-store traffic on Thanksgiving and Black Friday was down slightly from last year. Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday all posted 28 percent or higher digital commerce spending vs. 2017, Essling said. Total digital commerce spending grew 38 percent on Thanksgiving to $3.4 billion, 36 percent on Black Friday to $4.8 billion and 28 percent on Cyber Monday to $6 billion. Eighty-one percent of all transactions during the week, and 90 percent of those from computers, had free shipping. Consumers visited more retail sites sooner and spent at a faster rate than in previous years, said the analyst. Total e-commerce visits grew 15 percent on Thanksgiving, 13 percent on Black Friday and 11 percent on Cyber Monday. A Monday survey showed 18 percent of online buyers bought an item from Amazon’s “Black Friday Deals Week” that they had originally intended to make later, which Essling said illustrated the power of early promotions.