Eton began shipping a Wi-Fi-connected carbon monoxide and natural gas detector, it said Friday. The $129 device, with an integrated nightlight and flashlight, plugs into a wall outlet. When dangerous conditions are detected, it blasts an alarm and sends push notifications to a smartphone via the Eton app, said the company.
Nvidia’s gaming revenue of $2.8 billion in fiscal Q1 ended May 2 was up 11% sequentially and a 106% increase from Q1 a year earlier, said Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress on a Wednesday call. It was Nvidia’s third straight quarter of “accelerating year-on-year growth” in gaming, she said. The company expects to remain “supply-constrained” into the year’s second half, she said. “We are working hard to provide more supply for the strong demand that we see,” she said. Nvidia has “additional supply coming,” and its plan “is to take the supply, serve the overall gamers and work on building out the channel, as we know the channel is quite lean,” she said.
Consumer demand for wearables remained strong in Q1, though volume retreated from record Q4 levels, reported IDC Thursday. It estimates global shipments of 104.6 million devices were up 34.4% from Q1 a year earlier -- the first time first-quarter shipments topped 100 million. Though Apple and Samsung maintained double-digit leadership shares, most of the growth -- 55.5% year over year -- came from smaller companies like boAt and Oura, said IDC. Apple started 2021 the way it ended 2020 “as the clear leader in the worldwide wearables market,” IDC said. Samsung moved ahead of Xiaomi for the first time in Q1 and by more than a million units. Xiaomi was the only company among the top five to post a year-on-year decline.
Global smartphone shipments are expected to reach 1.38 billion handsets this year, rising 7.7% over 2020, reported IDC Wednesday. That trajectory is expected to continue into 2022, with 3.8% growth to 1.43 billion. “Markets worldwide continue to migrate toward 5G,” said IDC. “Within emerging markets, there is strong demand for mid-range and low-end 4G phones following last year's pandemic slowdown.” It projects a 3.7% compound annual growth rate in smartphone shipments through 2025. The chip shortage remains a concern for smartphone OEMs, but the impact has been far less than in other markets, said IDC. “Smartphones are seeing competition for consumer spending from adjacent markets like PCs, tablets, TVs and smart home devices, yet that hasn't slowed the market's path to recovery,” said analyst Ryan Reith. A strong “supply-side push” toward 5G continues, and prices of such handsets are dropping, said Reith. IDC expects average selling prices for 5G Android devices to drop 12% in 2021 to $456 and then below $400 in 2022: “With 5G shipments expected to grow nearly 130% in 2021, almost all regions outside of China will see triple-digit growth.”
PCs will remain one of the many thriving categories in the consumer tech space this year, reported IDC Tuesday. It’s forecasting 18.1% growth in shipments this year to 357 million units. Though IDC expects shipments to decline by about 3% in 2022, the overall five-year compound annual growth rate outlook “remains positive at 3%,” it said. “We continue to get an abundance of questions about the growing semiconductor shortage and its impact on PCs,” said IDC analyst Ryan Reith. “We don't debate that the overall semiconductor market is constrained right now, but for the overall PC market it is a very different narrative than the years leading up to the pandemic.” As the chip shortages continue into 2022, IDC anticipates at least some buyers “will settle for desktops in place of notebooks as the urgency of demand for any kind of PC remains quite high,” said analyst Jitesh Ubrani. “Longer term, the consumer refresh cycle is also expected to be pulled in slightly as the pandemic has raised the profile of PCs and consumers continue to spend more time and dollars on PC gaming and content consumption.”
Consumer intentions to buy new TV sets declined in May from April, according to preliminary data released Tuesday by the Conference Board, the first time it did the survey online (see 2105180017). The board switched survey vendors to online research specialist Toluna from Nielsen, which for years canvassed consumers by mail. “The improved quality of online surveys over the past several years coupled with declining mail survey response rates made this a good time to transition” to an online methodology, said the think tank. Toluna polled 3,000 U.S. homes through May 19, finding 11% plan to buy a new TV in the next six months, down from 11.6% in April and flat compared with 11% in May 2020, said the board. Consumer confidence was unchanged in May after rebounding sharply in March and April, it said: “Consumers’ short-term optimism retreated, prompted by expectations of decelerating growth and softening labor market conditions in the months ahead.”
The semiconductor industry typically goes through “cycles” of supply and demand imbalance, “but this one is different,” Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su told a J.P. Morgan virtual conference Monday. “The difference is you see every segment of the market having high demand.” Demand is “very, very high, and higher perhaps than any of us might have expected when we started the year,” she said. “The supply chain has actually been very, very focused on adding more capability. We saw sort of the beginnings of this late last year. We’ve been working very, very closely with our supply chain partners to continue to ramp up supply, adding additional capacity, doing all kinds of productivity improvements.” Su expects more capacity will come online “as we go through the next couple of quarters,” she said. “This will continue to be a key area of focus for the entire supply chain.” Amid the industry’s realization that demand is exceeding supply, “we have done a good job at prioritizing” existing capacity, said Su, “ensuring that we are giving our customers what they need to advance their product lines.” AMD deliberately is leaving some segments of the PC business “underserviced,” especially the “lower end of the PC market,” she said. “We have prioritized some of the higher-end commercial SKUs and gaming SKUs and those kinds of things.” With inventories so “very lean” throughout the semiconductor supply chain, no one is “ordering stuff to put it on the shelves,” but immediately dispatching product that “end customers want,” she said. Supply chain cooperation “is really unprecedented,” said Su.
The evolving smart home market is facing “another ignition” point, with consumers looking for full-scale systems, blogged Mark Burson, Nice vice president-marketing, who will speak at Parks Associates’ virtual Connections conference Tuesday on professional installation opportunities in smart home. Min Kang, Brinks Home chief strategy and product officer, said some smart devices can be installed by do-it-yourselfers, but “professional installation is an important piece of the puzzle” for more complex installations. The session will be at 3 p.m. EDT.
It's a “golden age of audio” where “everybody’s streaming,” whether it's music, podcasts or socially engaging with audio in new ways, said Sonos CEO Patrick Spence: There's also “the great reshuffling,” where the target audience is rethinking living and work situations as a result of work-from-home trends during the COVID-19 pandemic. Demand combined with component constraints have resulted in significant product delays for installations, he noted, amid a chip crunch. The situation will exist for a while, he said Thursday. “We’ll just try to keep everybody apprised of what we’re seeing.” Demand has been “nonperishable,” Spence said.
Best Buy Health's new smartphone is geared to older adults. One-touch access to its health and safety services include urgent care telehealth, said the company Thursday.