Nearly half of consumers who own or intend to buy a smart access device -- a smart door lock, a smart garage door opener or video doorbell -- value the ability to remotely allow Amazon package deliveries, reported Parks Associates Monday. More than a third (37 percent) of intended buyers or owners of would pay up to $1.98 per package for delivery inside their home or garage, Parks said. An increase in package theft from e-commerce has created “a new use case for the smart home,” said analyst Chris O’Dell. The prospect of package theft is an opportunity for smart home device manufacturers and service providers to boost consumer confidence by guaranteeing safe package delivery with in-home and in-garage delivery services, O’Dell said, citing Amazon’s April partnership announcement with Chamberlain (see 1904230033) for its myQ smart garage door openers. Among consumers who own or plan to buy a smart access device, 43 percent consider the ability for FedEx or UPS to perform in-garage delivery valuable, the analyst said. Traditional garage door openers have a typical life cycle of 10 or more years; smart access could provide an incentive to upgrade sooner, he said.
Spansive is recalling about 850 Source wireless multi-phone wireless chargers due to a report of a metallic phone accessory overheating when placed on the charger, said the Consumer Product Safety Commission Friday. No injuries have been reported. Consumers should stop using the recalled chargers and return them to the company for a full refund. Spansive is contacting purchasers directly about the recall; the devices were sold exclusively online at www.spansive.com for about $200. The recall applies only to Source chargers sold May 23-24, identifiable by a green label on the unit bottom, it said. The chargers are capable of powering up to six phones simultaneously, four wirelessly and two more via USB ports, it said. The brand was previously known as Pi Charging.
Summit Wireless is positioning its technology as a mainstream immersive sound option for consumers, available for as little as $1 as an embedded chip in smart TVs. Company engineers are taking IP from its chips, “enhancing it, and making it a licensable version” that can be designed into smartphones and smart TVs, “taking it to the broad market vs. the premium or performance market,” said CEO Brett Moyer Thursday. The Wireless Speaker and Audio technology is suited to gaming and esports, due to its 5 millisecond latency rate, he told the company's Thursday webcast. WiSA's latency is lower than Bluetooth, he noted. Moyer compared the WiSA Association to HDMI.org and Bluetooth Special Interest Group, with a charter to “make sure that all manufacturers know what to build so there’s interoperability” -- that a WiSA product from Harman will work with a WiSA-compatible LG product, for instance. The WiSA membership agreement has design interoperability requirements and marketing logo requirements so consumers "know what they are buying,” the CEO said.
Motorola launched the moto e6 smartphone Thursday for Verizon, starting at $149. The phone has a 5.5-inch display with 18:9 aspect ratio, a 13-megapixel camera with portrait mode, headphone jack and 3000 mAh removable battery. Users can watch movies or play games for more than eight hours or listen to songs offline for 109 hours, said the company. The Android phone will also be available via T-Mobile, Metro by T-Mobile, Boost Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Consumer Cellular and Xfinity Mobile, and unlocked on Amazon.com and at Best Buy, B&H Photo and Walmart, it said.
Yamaha announced a sound bar for enterprise applications Tuesday with a “collaboration kit” bundling an artificial intelligence-powered wide-angle USB camera from Huddly. Yamaha “tweaked” its sound bars for enterprise use, including adding a conference mode that optimizes output for speech and a hotel mode for content sharing in a lobby environment, a spokesperson emailed. A normal-regular mode provides standard sound bar features, she said. The sound bars, available through Amazon and CDW, are also available to the integrator channel.
Amazon began shipping the 7-inch Kindle Oasis e-reader Wednesday with a feature to automatically schedule screen display color temperature for day or night reading. Users also can manually adjust color temperature to preference. Oasis is $249 for the 8 GB version, $279 for 32 GB. The Paperwhite screen uses a 330 pixel-per-inch E Ink display.
Growing use of the internet, smartphones and fitness activities is fueling a global premium headphone market expected to grow at a 15.2 percent compound annual rate through 2027, said a Tuesday Coherent Market Insights report. Sound quality, price, brand name, headphone type and wearing comfort are the key factors driving customer buying behavior for the $300-$500 segment, it said. Though demand for premium features in headphones is rising in North America and Western Europe markets, Asia Pacific is expected to be the most lucrative market for premium headphones over the forecast period due to increasing adoption of paid digital audio subscriptions, growth of a fitness and sports industry and rising disposable income. China’s per capita disposable income grew by 6.5 percent from 2017 to 2018, it noted.
Laser-scanning display developer MicroVision raised $2 million by selling 3.04 million shares of common stock to Toronto real-estate developer Shmuel Farhi, said the company Tuesday. MicroVision will use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, it said. Farhi’s purchase price was just over 65 cents a share. The stock closed trading Tuesday unchanged at 70 cents. MicroVision faces a renewed delisting risk under a Nasdaq “delinquency notice” received June 13 after shares sold for under $1 for 30 straight trading days (see 1907190013). MicroVision had $4.6 million cash on hand at the end of Q2, said the company last week.
Spotify has “settled in” to the U.S. market, seeing “a decent but not spectacular user growth and retention pattern,” said Consumer Intelligence Research Partners analyst Josh Lowitz Tuesday. The streaming music service added one million subscribers in Q1, CIRP reported, with 38 percent of U.S. Spotify customers paying for Premium memberships. Lowitz cited competition from Amazon, Google, and Pandora, and especially Apple, now that it’s all in on paid streaming after consolidating iTunes into Apple Music. In the June quarter, 13 percent of Spotify ad-supported listeners trialed a Premium subscription, less than half the percentage in Q1, CIRP said. One-tenth of paid Premium subscribers ended their subscription, either reverting to ad-supported or ending their memberships, it said, vs. 14 percent in the March quarter. “The total user base stabilized, as growth from trials slowed, and retention of existing paid users improved,” said CIRP's Mike Levin. That retention “increased nicely, with a lower churn rate relative to recent trends,” suggesting that in the U.S. Spotify “may be settling in to a maturing, loyal user base.” Findings were based on surveys of 500 U.S. subjects who used Spotify April-June.
Intel holds its Q2 earnings call Thursday, and CEO Bob Swan is sure to face questions about reports Intel is in advanced talks to sell its 5G modems business to Apple. Swan reported on a late-April call that Intel was still deciding what to do with the rest of its 5G modems business (see 1904260005), after announcing earlier it was dropping 5G smartphone modems for lack of profit potential (see 1904170004). Evaluating Intel’s future in 5G modems for PCs and IoT devices, including what to do with the company’s “wonderful” patent portfolio, was a "work in progress," said Swan then. Neither Apple nor Intel commented Tuesday on the reports.