Consumers, contrary to “widespread myths,” aren't hesitant to return to in-person shopping and aren’t letting concerns about their personal finances get in the way of holiday spending, an NPD survey found. Four in every five consumers responding to a questionnaire the week before Thanksgiving said they planned to shop both online and in physical stores over the holidays, said NPD Thursday. Only 9% were afraid to return to in-person shopping, it said. Though more than two-thirds of respondents gave the U.S. economy only “fair” or “poor” grades, nearly an equal proportion planned to spend the same amount or more for the holidays than they did last year, said NPD.

COVID-19 as an “accelerant” of hybrid work and remote learning was no “cyclical, one-time” trend, HP President-Personal Systems Alex Cho told a UBS investor conference virtually Wednesday. The shift was “structural,” he said. Even when people begin to travel more for business, work “will continue to be more hybrid,” he said. “That is a structural change that will require ongoing technology enablement to support.” People are reducing their “travel spend,” and assuming that technology “has to be the replacement to enable that reduction,” he said, virtually all companies are looking at “how to equip their employees now that they are going to be working more at home,” and three-quarters are “actively investing in improving their home setups.” he said. “While penetration rates have been increasing, there's still room for growth, and we see that all as good news for this ecosystem that we are participating in.” The total addressable market for PC-reliant categories is “structurally larger” than pre-pandemic, and it will “continue to grow,” said Cho. “As we look forward, the market is going to be $560 billion. That's a 40% increase versus pre-pandemic expectations.” HP expects supply constraints to continue “at least through the second half” of calendar 2022, he said. “We are an environment where demand is larger than supply.” HP estimates it has “about a quarter’s worth” of order backlog, he said. “We do expect it to go down over time as we find ourselves in a more favorable supply environment and our ability to execute in that space continues to improve.” Everyone in the PC business is monitoring “refresh cycles” very closely as a stimulant for growth, he said. A PC’s audio and video quality is “one of the top drivers” for faster refresh rates, “and that will continue to be the case,” he said. Another driver is the “continued shift” to notebook PCs from desktops, he said. “The refresh cycles of notebooks are faster than desktops.”

Global unit shipments of “traditional” PCs are expected to grow 13.5% this year to 344.7 million units, despite a 3.4% decline in the holiday quarter, as supply chain constraints and logistical bottlenecks “continue to be a burden on getting products into many channels,” reported IDC Tuesday. “Tablets face a similar trend with annual shipments in 2021 growing 4.3% while fourth quarter shipments are expected to decline 8.6%.” Despite the slowdown in consumer demand in certain segments and markets, demand for gaming “remains an exception and overall consumer demand is well above pre-pandemic levels,” said IDC analyst Jitesh Ubrani. After two straight years of strong double-digit growth fueled by demand for remote work and learning productivity tools during COVID-19, “the expectation is that the PC market will begin to slow in 2022,” said IDC. It’s forecasting a 3.3% compound annual growth rate through 2025, “with most of that growth coming from the notebook PC segment,” it said. Tablets will continue declining “as the category remains challenged by smartphones and notebook PCs,” it said.

With the pandemic having “fundamentally changed” how people work, employees have moved “from working primarily out of physical offices to working primarily in digital screens,” Dropbox Chief Financial Officer Tim Regan told a Nasdaq investor conference Thursday. COVID-19 “accelerated a few areas of our business that were already in place,” he said. Dropbox subscriptions are up 30% from 2021 from “a rise in solopreneurs and freelancers starting their own businesses,” he said.

Consumer intentions on buying new TV sets dropped in November from October, according to preliminary Conference Board data released Tuesday. Toluna canvassed 5,000 U.S. homes for the board through Nov. 19, finding 9.7% planning to buy a new TV in the next six months, down from 11.6% in October, 10.9% in September and 9.9% in November 2020. The consumer confidence index declined in November after rising in October, as concerns about rising prices and COVID-19's delta variant drove the decrease, said the board. Toluna fielded the November survey days before the omicron variant was identified in southern Africa. “The Conference Board expects this to be a good holiday season for retailers and confidence levels suggest the economic expansion will continue into early 2022. However, both confidence and spending will likely face headwinds from rising prices and a potential resurgence of COVID-19 in the coming months,” it said.

YouTube's community guidelines and strikes process for violations will be codified as part of its terms of service effective Jan. 5, increasing transparency, it told users. It said while TOS is still a legal document, "we've done our best to make them easier to understand" through reorganization and rewording.

Heightened gift-card giving due to shipping-delay concerns will extend the holiday shipping season into January, said Pitney Bowes Monday. A third of shoppers responding to a survey of over 2,000 consumers in the past month said they prefer sending and receiving gift cards, up from a year ago. “Those waiting until the last minute to shop are likely to be impacted most by inventory shortages and shipping delays and will probably also turn to gift cards to finish their shopping,” said Vijay Ramachandran, Pitney Bowes' vice president-market strategy for global e-commerce. Millennials drive gift card spending across most product categories, representing 37% of dollars spent, it said. General merchandise store brands like Amazon, Walmart and Target rank at the top for gift card popularity and spending, with 74% of shoppers saying they have purchased such a card, spending an average $56.90. Some 58% of consumers who receive a gift card plan to spend it within days or a few weeks after the holiday, it said. More than half have already started holiday shopping; 46% are nearly finished, it said. Consumers will do most of their holiday shopping in the next three weeks, with 63% planning to finish online shopping by Dec. 13. Black Friday has become a top cyber event with 78% saying they will do their holiday deal hunting online, though most expect Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals to last through the season. A third plan to shop the high-profile days more than last year.

Major pay-TV providers lost about 650,000 net video subscribers in 3Q vs. a 90,000 loss in the year-ago quarter, said Leichtman Research Group Thursday. The top pay-TV providers account for about 77 million subscribers, 41.9 million for the top seven cable companies, 7.5 million for the top publicly reporting virtual MVPDs. Top cable providers had a net loss of about 700,000 video subs, vs. a loss of 380,000 in 3Q 2020; Comcast shed 407,000, bringing its base to 18.5 million. Other traditional pay-TV services had a net loss of about 635,000 vs. a loss of 780,000. All traditional pay-TV companies lost customers, but vMVPDs Hulu+Live TV (300,000), Sling TV (117,000) and fuboTV (262,884) gained, LRG said, though growth slowed to 680,000 from 1.1 million. Annual net losses were similar to a year ago, said LRG President Bruce Leichtman, saying top pay-TV providers shed about 5.1 million subs over the past year vs. losing some 4.8 million.

Next year could bring better news for residential broadband providers' and broadcasters' rebounds from the COVID-19 pandemic, though streaming service new entrants and legacy pay-TV providers face a murkier future, Kagan said Friday. Federal investment in closing the digital divide should help drive 3.9 million residential broadband subscriber net additions next year, raising penetration to 92%, up from 88% at the end of 2020, it said. Midterm election and legalized sports betting advertisements will help aid broadcasters' rebound from the pandemic, it said, predicting TV broadcaster revenue of $38.2 billion, up $4.1 billion, and radio station revenue at $15.8 billion, up $2.1 billion. MVPD penetration globally, which peaked at 60.6% of households in 2018, is expected to decline to 58.2% next year as customers move to streaming services or virtual MVPDs. Subscription VOD sub growth could slow next year, it said. Kagan predicted the consumer electronics industry continuing to be hit by the global semiconductor shortage, with improvements to semiconductor supplies coming in 2023 at the earliest.

With the “status quo” of polluted and gridlocked cities beginning to change, investments in urban infrastructure aimed at implementing "new visions" for smart cities will reach $375 billion globally by 2030 as municipalities invest increasingly “in brownfield and greenfield projects,” reported ABI Research Thursday. Though there seems “little doubt” that global urbanization will continue unabated, “it is equally clear that current concepts of urban living and infrastructure are neither sustainable nor scalable from an environmental impact, resilience, cost, and humanized living perspective,” said ABI. “The very concept of cities will change profoundly and structurally.” The “digitalization of lifestyles,” induced and accelerated by COVID-19, is among the “numerous” drivers behind “urban innovation,” it said.