There's “no shortage of people” applying for Barnes & Noble CEO after B&N fired Demos Parneros (see 1807050002), said Chairman Len Riggio on a Thursday earnings call. B&N's founder was candid about historical failures to compete in e-commerce. The emphasis is on “healing, fixing, putting us in a position to be able to go out and get a CEO,” said Riggio. “We've got a lot of work to do right now. We're up for it.” The wrongful-termination complaint (in Pacer) Parneros filed Aug. 28 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan “is nothing but a smokescreen in an attempt to extort money,” said Riggio. The board voted unanimously to fire Parneros “based upon multiple events of significant misconduct, including sexual harassment, bullying behavior and other violations of company policies,” Riggio said. Lawyers for Parneros didn’t comment Friday. Meantime, the company is removing the Nook fixtures at the front of the store “that were once required to serve a larger business” in tablets, Riggio said. “For many, many years,” it had a problem “integrating” stores with a viable online business, he said. “We are not alone.” B&N “did not perform for many years up to expectations,” he said. The retailer thinks it has a team “that really knows how to work from the bottom up, customer to customer, book to book, transaction to transaction, to create a site that is viewed favorably by our customers and compares favorably to the best sites,” Riggio said. The goal is to “build our retail business with our site, which should have been the purpose of the site from day one,” he said. “We're pledged to do that, and we think that some of the customers that we've been bleeding over the past 15 years will begin to come back.” Also Thursday, the retailer reported sales fell 6.9 percent to $795 million in the quarter ended July 28 from the year-ago period. Comparable store sales declines improved each month of the quarter and last month. Friday, the stock closed Friday up 16 percent at $5.30.
Fraunhofer is developing methods of integrating OLED “elements” into textiles for wearables and will showcase its innovations at the upcoming Electronics System Integration Technology Conference (ESTC) in Dresden, Germany, it said Friday. When OLEDs are applied on wafer-thin foils for embedding in textiles, “the range of applications is diverse and not limited to fashion trends,” said Fraunhofer. Integrating “luminous” OLED elements in clothing “not only freshens up fashion designs, it can also create very concrete benefits,” such as for use in “workwear for night logistics,” it said. Fraunhofer is seeking partners for “pilot production and is already “collaborating with designers in the fashion industry,” it said. It estimates the first OLED fashions will appear in stores in about three years, it said. ESTC opens Sept. 18 for a four-day run.
Qualcomm regards 2019 and 2020 as likely “building years” for 5G smartphones as a prelude to the market reaching “scale” in 2021, said Chief Financial Officer George Davis at a Citi investors conference Wednesday. Every major smartphone OEM will have “rolled over to 5G” by 2021, he said. That Qualcomm knows of one “very large OEM” customer that plans no 5G smartphone launch in 2019 leads the company to believe that the market won’t be “ready for scale” until 2020 or later, he said. The componentry that Qualcomm markets for 4G smartphones “has an integrated modem,” he said. “Everything is very efficient and uber-effective” and is a “great value proposition for the supply chain,” he said. “You’ll have all that” with 5G, but not until 2021, he said. That will give Qualcomm at least a year and a half for the “debugging of everything,” learning all the “pain points that come with any generation change,” he said. It’s not easy to compare the predicted 5G ramp with the launch of 4G six years ago, said Davis. Average selling prices (ASPs) of the componentry that will go into a 5G smartphone will go up because those devices “are more complex,” he said. “They're bigger. They provide more functionality. So, that's a positive.” With the 5G ramp, “you won't have the same degree of unit growth behind it” as the industry had with the 4G launch, because the smartphone market is more mature and can’t support that same “sheer growth,” he said. Nevertheless, “from our standpoint, it's a very important time for improving share and improving ASPs and I think that's really what plays out over the over the next few years,” he said.
Himax will collaborate with MediaTek and facial-recognition developer Megvii on the first 3D-sensing reference design for Android smartphones using an active stereo camera. Compared with structured light technology for 3D-sensing, the ASC approach has lower cost and targets "mass market smartphone models for facial recognition, secure online payment” and artificial-intelligence-based “photo enhancement,” it said Wednesday. It promises to inspire “broader adoption” among Android smartphone makers during 2019.
Energous said its WattUp near-field wireless charging technology has secured regulatory certification in 100 countries including the U.S., Australia, Canada, India, Taiwan and all EU countries. Among those not on the list were China, Israel, Japan and South Korea. While each WattUp-enabled device requires its own certification, Energous customers will be able to reference the Energous certifications “to expedite the regulatory process,” said CEO Stephen Rizzone Wednesday, saying initial rollouts from customers to consumers will begin in coming weeks, “followed by full global releases as the remaining certifications are secured.”
The global e-waste management market is expected to reach 63.7 million metric tons generated by 2025, up from 44.7 million in 2016, Grand View Research reported Tuesday. It noted high-volume sales of electronic devices.