At year's end, 155,029 CableCARDs were in service, with 20,873 in inventory, NCTA said Wednesday in FCC docket 97-80. It said the average monthly CableCARD lease was $2, and average installation cost $50. The deployments were down slightly from the year-ago quarter.

Consumer intentions to buy new TV sets jumped sharply in January from December, according to preliminary Conference Board data released Tuesday. Nielsen canvassed 5,000 U.S. homes through Jan. 15 and found 12.4 percent planned to buy a new TV set in the next six months, said the board. That was up from 11.3 percent in December, though down from 13 percent in November and 12.8 percent in January 2019, it said. A more “positive assessment of the current job market and increased optimism about future job prospects” drove an increase in consumer confidence in January, said the board: “Optimism about the labor market should continue to support confidence in the short-term and, as a result, consumers will continue driving growth and prevent the economy from slowing in early 2020.”

Suburbs are the place to be for fewest wireless network problems, with urban areas experiencing the most, J.D. Power reported Thursday. Managing customer expectations for speed and reliability is important because user perceptions of speed on high-band vs. low-band frequencies vary, said analyst Ian Greenblatt. Multi-tier 5G strategies can address that “if providers properly set those expectations against the reality of the real-world speeds.” Verizon ranked first with fewest problems per 100 interactions in all six regions.

U.S. videogame content sales rose 2 percent in 2019 to $35.4 billion, as mobile and subscription spending helped offset "physical content and PC digital content" declines, reported the Entertainment Software Association and NPD Group on Thursday. NPD analyst Mat Piscatella cited "expanded reach and accessibility of content across a variety of platforms including console, PC, mobile and virtual reality.” ESA and NPD didn't comment on whether there's a 2020 forecast.

The National Retail Federation estimates 193.8 million U.S. adults plan to watch Super Bowl LIV live from Miami and to spend $17.2 billion in connection with the Fox telecast, said the association Thursday. NRF canvassed 7,300 adults Jan. 2-9 and found 9 percent plan to buy new TV sets in time for the game. That would equate to about 17.4 million TVs. Fox Sports will produce the Feb. 2 broadcast in native 1080p with hybrid log-gamma HDR, Kevin Callahan, vice president-field operations and engineering, told the Sports Video Group in December. There are “real reasons” why sports look better in 1080p than in 4K at 60 frames a second, said Mike Davies, Fox senior vice president-field and technical operations. “At 60 frames, in 4K, you will get more motion blur in action scenes.” Pay-TV and streaming services that take the Fox feed will have the option of upconverting it to 4K, he said. “We still must remember that while it’s all well and good that we are doing this in UHD, that very few people will be seeing it that way. We do need to serve the greater audience of 100-plus million people domestically, and make sure the experience is good for them.”

Video remains a valuable service, but Comcast is "not chasing this segment of the market" and expects increased video subscriber losses this year due to rate hikes and ongoing cord cutting, Chief Financial Officer Michael Cavanagh said on the company's Q4 call Thursday. The company ended 2019 with 20.29 million residential video customers, down 671,000 year over year. It ended the year with 26.4 million residential broadband customers, up 1.3 million, 9.9 million residential voice customers, down 220,000, and with 2 million wireless lines, up 816,000. Cavanaugh anticipates wireless subscriber growth rates to continue this year. CEO Brian Roberts said it was the best year for broadband net additions in 12 years. He said the company ran out of its Flex set-top boxes for its Flex streaming platform (see 1903210038) in its first month. Comcast said revenue was $28.4 billion, flat on a pro forma basis. Comcast bought Sky in Q4 2018.

Vendors will ship over 3 billion smart devices globally in 2023 -- including smartphones, PCs, tablets, wearables, smart speakers and personal audio devices -- up from 2.4 billion last year, said Canalys Wednesday, citing the expansion of “ambient computing.” Newer categories, such as smart personal audio devices, wearable bands and smart speakers, form multiple touch points that complete intelligent ecosystems for consumers on the move, at work or at home, said analyst Jason Low. Smartphones will remain the most important category, though vendors face challenging conditions despite 5G and new form factors, said Low. Smart personal audio will be the fastest growing category this year, up 32.1 percent to 490 million. Smart speakers continue to expand, rising 21.7 percent to 150 million, followed by wearables, up 11.8 percent.

The Trump administration’s decision to delay proposed Section 301 List 4B tariffs last month led to stronger than expected PC spending in the holiday quarter, and led U.S. retailers to absorb additional inventory, said Canalys Friday, but concerns over Brexit led to lower gains in Europe, Middle East and Africa. The U.S. had 7 percent growth in Q4 vs. the prior-year quarter, to 17.9 million shipments, but 2020 “is unlikely to repeat the success of 2019,” said analyst Rushabh Doshi. Citing macroeconomic factors, Doshi said key markets including the U.S., Japan and India are expected to underperform for most of the year. Adding uncertainty is “a possible disruption to HP, which continues to be the target of a hostile takeover by Xerox,” Doshi said. In the U.K., PC shipments will likely accelerate as channels build inventory ahead of the Jan. 31 departure date from the EU, “as distributors are nervous about subsequent product delays between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK,” said the analyst. The global PC market -- including desktop, laptops and workstations -- recorded its first full year of growth in eight years last year, growing 2.7 percent to 268.1 million shipments. Lenovo (6.4 percent), HP (6.6 percent) and Dell (10.6 percent) had growth, but Apple computer sales declined 8.1 percent.

Intel retook the top global semiconductor share by revenue from Samsung in 2019, a year in which shipments declined 11.9 percent to $4118.3 billion, reported Gartner Tuesday. The memory market was 26.7 percent of semiconductor sales in 2019, and experienced a 31.5 percent revenue decline from a year earlier, it said. Samsung revenue declined 29.1 percent to $52.2 billion, as the company “struggled with oversupply and falling prices” that confronted all memory vendors, it said. Intel rose to the top market-share slot despite incurring a 0.7 percent revenue decline to $65.8 billion, said Gartner.

U.S. home entertainment spending increased 8.93 percent in Q4 to $6.82 billion and jumped 8.44 percent for the year to $25.17 billion, reported the Digital Entertainment Group Monday. Subscription streaming was the industry’s lifeblood, rising 26.04 percent in Q4 to $4.32 billion and increasing 23.73 percent for the year to $15.9 billion, said DEG. Packaged media sales slid further, declining 17.81 percent in Q4 to $1.02 billion, it said.