A T-Mobile/Dish Network merger would hardly be a surprise, but coming to terms won’t be easy, Craig Moffett, analyst at MoffettNathanson, said Friday. “Both companies have shamelessly and repeatedly expressed their mutual admiration in recent months,” Moffett wrote investors. “But you’ll forgive us if we’re a bit skeptical. Getting from what sounds like a vaguely sensible combination of two pools of similar spectrum to a workable valuation framework for a mutually-agreeable deal is likely to be very, very hard.” Moffett said the merger wouldn't be about bundling satellite TV with a wireless offering or wirelessly delivering Sling TV. “Neither idea holds any water,” he said. “A combination between the two would be a grand spectrum transaction and nothing more.” Any such deal is seen getting U.S. approval (see 1506040051).

Cree is voluntarily recalling the LED T8 lamp due to an electrical arcing threat that could cause the lamp to overheat and melt, posing a burn hazard, said a Consumer Product Safety Commission recall summary. Cree has received four reports of the lamps overheating and melting with no injuries reported, it said. Consumers should “immediately stop using, disconnect or switch off the fixture” and contact Cree for a full refund or replacement lamp, said the notice. Roughly 700,000 T8 lamps were sold to commercial lighting customers and to Home Depot stores nationwide -- with an additional 11,500 in Canada -- from August through April for about $22 per tube, said Cree. The Cree LED T8 lamps are used indoors to replace traditional two-pin T8 fluorescent tubes. Cree also issued a voluntary recall last summer for its LED high-bay luminaires. Cree didn’t immediately respond to questions.

Apple is offering $325 refunds for each of 222,000 Beats Pill XL speakers sold in the U.S. -- part of a global voluntary recall sparked by reports that the speaker's battery may overheat and pose a fire safety risk, said an Apple "important notice" and Consumer Product Safety Commission "recall summary," both posted Wednesday. Incidents involving the speakers have been “rare,” Apple said, without quantifying them. However, the CPSC, which is overseeing the U.S. recall, said Apple “has received eight reports of incidents of the speakers overheating, including one with a burn to a consumer's finger and one with damage to a consumer's desk.” Beats by Dre introduced the Beats Pill XL speakers in November 2013, Apple said, about seven months before Apple announced the $3 billion agreement to buy Beats in a deal it completed in late July 2014. However, the recall affects Beats Pill XL speakers sold only since January 2014, the CPSC notice said. Apple and CPSC representatives didn’t comment. Apple is instructing consumers to stop using their Beats Pill XL speakers and visit the company’s recall website for information on how to procure a postage-paid box for returning the product to the company. Those who follow the procedure should expect a $325 Apple Store credit or electronic refund payment in about three weeks, the website says. Given the high volume of Beats Pill XL speakers sold globally, the recall could cost Apple many millions of dollars in refunds and postage and processing costs, including in excess of $7.2 million in the U.S. alone, if all the affected products are returned to the company.

AkzoNobel, a $14 billion global paint, coating and specialty chemical producer, wants a bigger piece of the consumer electronics pie. The Amsterdam-based company held a presentation in New York’s fashionable Meatpacking District Wednesday to promote its design services. AkzoNobel's customers include Boeing, GE, General Motors and Proctor & Gamble, and its powder coatings were used in the construction of The New York Times building in New York and Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. The company works with most major smartphone and PC makers, said Alberto Slikta, managing director, but he wouldn't say how much annual revenue the CE space accounts for. Now, AkzoNobel wants to offer its in-house design team as a third-party service to small- and mid-sized CE companies. The CE business is most similar to the yacht industry among the varied categories in the AkzoNobel portfolio because of the pride and emotional connection consumers have with personal possessions they view as extensions of themselves, said Slikta. Kiki Tang, color and material finishes designer-specialty coatings, showed a swath of smartphone case designs the company has drawn up for the 2015-2016 product season that the AkzoNobel team developed through its research of major market trends. Each year, the company’s design team goes to various trade shows and gathers information about the color, material and texture of the latest industrial designs, analyzes how they will influence the consumer market and then translates the findings into four color themes, eight color palettes and 72 color effects and textures to be used for the latest look in CE finishes. AkzoNobel works with companies on the final design to tweak colors, add accents or develop a specific design for limited-edition product runs, said Tang. Most CE products fall into the black, white and silver color spaces, said Ted Rhee, sales director-CE Americas, but a lot of companies also want special edition products using custom colors and textures. “End users want a unique finish for themselves,” he said. Tactile finishes have become increasingly important for consumers looking for a particular feel, such as the popular soft-touch rubber finish. In the past, soft rubberized coatings could be done only in dark colors because the finish would stain with lighter colors. AkzoNobel developed a way to give bright colors a silky feel without staining, said Rhee.

TCL shipped 1.37 million LCD TVs globally in April, a 12.6 percent decline from the 1.58 million it shipped in April 2014, the company said in a Friday announcement. TCL shipped 5.55 million LCD TVs in the first four months of 2015, a 2.6 percent increase from the 5.4 million it shipped in January-April last year, it said. Of the LCD TVs that TCL shipped in April, nearly 500,000 were smart TVs, a 50.6 percent increase from the 328,000 smart TVs it shipped in April last year, it said. Its global smart TV shipments jumped 59.1 percent to 1.67 million in January-April, vs. 1 million a year earlier, it said. TCL shipped 754,000 LCD TVs in China in April, a 10.2 percent decline from the 840,000 sets it shipped there in April 2014, it said. For the year through April, its LCD TV shipments in China climbed 10.7 percent to 2.92 million from 2.64 million in the same 2014 period, it said. But TCL LCD TV shipments outside China are lagging, the company said. For April, they declined 15.3 percent to nearly 620,000, from 732,000, and for 2015's first four months, they were down 5.2 percent to 2.61 million, from 2.76 million, it said. Cumulatively, TCL built a base of 8.19 million “activated smart TV users” globally through the end of April, the company said. Its April roster of activated users jumped 136.4 percent to 421,000, from 178,000, it said. For the year through April, activated users jumped 64.7 percent to 1.44 million, from nearly 877,000, it said.

Comcast will create more than 5,500 customer service jobs as part of a new multiyear plan to improve customer service, it said Tuesday in a news release. The plan includes a goal by Q3 2015 of being always on time for customer appointments, it said. The company will “simplify billing and create better policies to provide greater consistency and transparency to customers” and invest in employee training, it said. “This transformation is about shifting our mindset to be completely focused on the customer,” said Neil Smit, CEO of Comcast Cable. The company's new job creation effort will kick off with 2,000 new employees hired to staff three new customer support centers in Albuquerque, Spokane and Tucson, Comcast said. The first new center -- in Albuquerque -- will be staffed with “bilingual employees who will support Spanish-speaking customers across the country,” Comcast said. The centers in Tucson and Spokane will be “operational” later this year, Comcast said. The company is tripling the size of its social media customer care team, hiring 250 new employees for its Xfinity stores, and automatically crediting customers $20 if a technician is late, it said. The customer service effort also includes an online service that will let customers track their service technicians, revamped Xfinity stores and increased training, Comcast said. In Chicago at INTX 2015, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts Tuesday demo'd new technologies designed to improve customer service (see 1505040059) after what he has called a disappointing end to the company's bid for Time Warner Cable (see 1505040059).

Headphone supplier Skullcandy believes it will “recapture” the sales it lost with RadioShack’s bankruptcy through higher sales volumes with new and existing accounts, “but this will likely take beyond this year to achieve in full,” CEO Hoby Darling said Tuesday on an earnings call. Skullcandy is evaluating potential sales opportunities at RadioShack in its post-bankruptcy “configuration,” including the 1,500 stores operated by Sprint and the 1,700 franchised locations that will continue to operate under the RadioShack banner, Darling said. “These discussions are ongoing and it’s too early to say definitively what if any presence we’ll have in these stores.” Skullcandy is “exploring ways to extend the accessibility of our brand through additional online platforms,” Darling said. Of the recent start of tests of direct sales through Amazon, Darling said: “Like we do with all new accounts, this is very much a crawl, walk, run strategy.” Skullcandy sees “great upside long-term with Amazon,” he said, but “we want to make sure we open Amazon in the way that is right for the Skullcandy brand, our retailers and most importantly for our consumers.” Before Skullcandy can “accelerate our penetration” at Amazon, “we need to bring the brand presentation up to our standards,” he said.

Sony sold 2.7 million Bravia LCD TVs globally in Q4 ended March 31, bringing its total sold for the fiscal year to 14.6 million, an 8.1 percent unit-sales increase from the previous fiscal year, the company said Thursday in the presentation charts accompanying its year-end earnings report. Its year-end result was a shade above the 14.5 million sets that its February forecast said it would sell. But Sony is projecting a 21.2 percent decline in LCD TV set sales to 11.5 million in the fiscal year ending March 2016. Sony Mobile Communications finished the year having sold 39.1 million smartphones globally. That’s flat with the 39.1 million it sold in the previous fiscal year and a shade under the 39.2 million it said in the February forecast it would sell. For the fiscal year ending March 2016, Sony sees its smartphone sales declining 23.3 percent to 30 million handsets. For the year overall, Sony corporately finished with a 5.8 percent sales increase to $68.5 billion ($1 = 120 yen) and a 159 percent improvement in operating income to $571 million, the company said in its financial release. Sony’s core Home Entertainment & Sound sector finished the year with a 3.3 percent sales increase to $10.1 billion and a $167 million operating profit, versus a year-earlier loss. Sony’s TV business finished in the black for the first time in 11 years, recording an operating profit of $69 million, the company said. “This improvement was primarily due to cost reductions and an improvement in product mix reflecting a shift to high value-added models, partially offset by the unfavorable impact of the appreciation of the U.S. dollar, reflecting the high ratio of U.S. dollar-denominated costs,” Sony said. Sony expects another profitable year for its TV business in the fiscal 12 months ending March 2016 but is being conservative in its forecasts, saying it thinks operating income will decline by about 40 percent in the TV sector.

It’s getting crowded at the edge of consumer electronics as Microsoft announced at its Build 2015 developer conference in San Francisco Wednesday that its next-gen Web browser will be called Microsoft Edge. It joins Samsung's Galaxy S6 Edge and Note Edge and the Ford Edge SUV on the cutting edge of consumer tech. Microsoft Edge, formerly code-named Project Spartan, will launch with Windows 10 this summer. At the conference Wednesday, Microsoft predicted Windows 10 will be running on 1 billion computers within 2-3 years, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Unexpected softness in the car electronics aftermarket and lower sales resulting from the transfer of its home AV business to Onkyo caused Pioneer to significantly downgrade sales and profit estimates for the year ended March 31, the company said in a Tuesday announcement. Pioneer expects sales for the year to finish 2.6 percent lower than it said in its Feb. 9 forecast and for net profit to be 21 percent lower than previously thought, the company said. Pioneer still expects sales to be 0.7 percent higher than in the fiscal year ended March 2014 and for net profit to rise 2,600 percent, the company said.