Households with children in the 6-11 age group lead technology product and entertainment service purchasing in the U.S., blogged Parks Associates Thursday. About 30% of broadband households have children at home, some 32 million households, and identify as “innovators” who like to buy a new product early in its lifecycle. Possible inhibitors to future tech adoption are the COVID-19 outbreak and resulting financial impact, with 61% of households with children feeling more cost-conscious because of the pandemic, Parks said. Device makers and service providers should emphasize their solution’s value, such as safety and security; entertainment is also important to keep children engaged, said analyst Jennifer Kent.
Payroll services company Paychex is “seeing a steady increase in paid employees” as clients have hired back employees furloughed during the pandemic, said CEO Martin Mucci on a fiscal Q4 investor call Tuesday. The number of what Paychx calls “suspended businesses” is down to “less than a half of where we were at the peak and continues to come down,” he said. “We're seeing businesses come back,” though not always with the “full employment that they had before,” he said. “They're bringing back employees faster than we had expected.” Paychex is seeing “some,” but not many, clients “yet at this point” going dormant a second time due to partial reclosings in states experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases, said Mucci. “The funny thing is, some of the Southern states still are performing the best.” There’s no noticeable payroll “drop in those states that have seen some higher occurrence” of COVID-19, he said.
Average audio streaming per household jumped 32% from the week of Dec. 30 to the week of June 15, led by an early April surge during the pandemic, said Comscore Wednesday. Comparing the week of June 15 with the week of Dec. 10, it said average audio streaming hours rose by 54 minutes per day. Category leader Spotify had a 1% increase January-May, while Pandora jumped 42%, the largest increase of streaming audio platforms during the span. IHeartRadio rose 11%. Of households using connected TV devices to listen to audio, Amazon Fire TV led with over 67 million hours via streaming homes in May. Amazon Echo devices were second with over 48 million, followed by Google Home, over 14 million.
Twitch hours viewed in May were up 99% from December, said IDC Wednesday. The top 15 most popular games had 48% of global Twitch hours watched since the beginning of the year, said a report produced with Esports. Across 15 comparable tournaments, hours watched were up 114% in the post-pandemic period and the average number of viewers increased by two-thirds. Games playable on PCs and/or game consoles and/or mobile devices “significantly outperformed PC-only titles since the pandemic," said analyst Lewis Ward.
Imports at major U.S. retail container ports are expected to remain significantly below last year’s levels into this fall as the impact of the pandemic continues, reported the National Retail Federation Wednesday. The COVID-19 recession “may be easing,” but retailers are sourcing goods from overseas more conservatively due to the economic uncertainty, it said. “The outlook for imports is slowly improving, but these are still some of the lowest numbers we’ve seen in years.” U.S. ports handled 1.53 million 20-foot-long cargo containers or their equivalents in May, down 4.8% from April and 17.2% fewer than in May 2019, said NRF. June imports were estimated to be down 5.8% from a year earlier. July is forecast to be down 14.1%, with a 13.3% decline expected in August and a 12.3% decline forecast for September.
The sudden shift to virtual video conferences in 2020's first half -- due to the COVID-19 pandemic -- had “mixed results,” said IDC Tuesday. Few event organizers actively facilitated live chat to allow questions of speakers or enable audience interaction, it said. The report documented conferences that became virtual events hosting between 250 and “thousands” of attendees. Live events are an important source of information, and organizers can handle that well with streaming and content downloads, noted analyst Wayne Kurtzman, but networking is equally important to attendees. At in-person events, 86% of people engage in conversations by socializing, networking and developing professional relationships, Kurtzman blogged Thursday. In virtual conferences, 57% of organizers didn’t seek to engage attendees or enable them to engage as a group. Not providing an engagement channel “drives a sharp increase in Twitter conversations” with users sometimes breaking away from the event’s hashtag, making it “invisible” to organizers, “and the results are not always positive,” he said. Organizers and attendees said engagement, audio quality and networking need improvement, and closed captioning is needed. Calling virtual conferences the new “real world” events, Kurtzman said companies should offer attendees an easy way to engage and make a good impression “with video, lighting, and audio -- and usable, authentic content."
The global online entertainment market is expected to have a 20.8% compound annual growth rate the next seven years, reaching $652.5 billion, reported Allied Market Research Monday. Internet traffic had 70% growth during COVID-19 lockdowns, and “most of the bandwidth has been consumed by online entertainment applications,” it said. “There has been significant rise in monthly or yearly subscriptions.”
The public can virtually access four administrative litigation proceedings, the FTC announced in orders Monday, citing COVID-19. The public won’t be allowed inside the hearing room, with in-person access limited to the witnesses, counsel, judicial staff and the court reporter. One such proceeding involves Axon having bought body-worn camera rival VieVu.
CEO confidence improved to a score of 44 in Q2 from 34 in Q1, reported the Conference Board Thursday. A grade of more than 50 points reflects more positive than negative responses, it said. Canvassing for the Q2 survey was done mid-May through mid-June. “Amid historic unemployment, business growth challenges, a weak economic environment, and a pandemic that persists, it comes as no surprise that CEOs feel grim about the current lay of the land,” said the board. Only 10% said conditions are better than six months ago, though that was up from 5% in Q1, it said. Slightly more than 80% percent of CEOs said conditions are worse in their own industries, down from 92% last quarter, it said. Despite feeling bleak about the present, CEOs were more optimistic than in Q1 about the economic outlook for the next six months, it said. In Q2, 71% said they expect economic conditions to improve, compared with 50% last quarter, it said. Only 16% said they expect economic conditions will worsen, down from 44% in Q1.
Registration for the Sept. 3-5 IFA 2020 show opened Wednesday, the same day the EU lifted some travel restrictions, but won't allow residents of the U.S., where COVID-19 isn't contained, to enter its external borders. IFA organizers “very much hope that the travel restrictions for US travelers will be eased” by the beginning of September and that “physical participation” in the show will "be possible -- hopefully without a quarantine,” emailed spokesperson Nicole von der Ropp Thursday. The EU says it will revisit the travel-ban policy every two weeks. IFA organizers said they're confident conditions will permit a vastly downsized in-person event at the Messe Berlin fairgrounds, limited to 4,000 people daily (see 2005190035). Samsung announced Tuesday it was pulling out and will stage its own virtual event in early September.