Despite a slowing global economy and the “looming” U.S.-China trade war, information and communications technology will maintain “steady” sales growth over the next five years, said IDC Thursday. It predicts worldwide ICT spending on hardware, software services and telecom will rise at a 3.8 percent compound annual growth rate, reaching $4.8 trillion in 2023. "Confidence indicators are fluctuating on a monthly basis, depending on short-term indicators ranging from speculation over tariffs and trade wars to political wild cards,” said the researcher. “End-user surveys reflect the impact of this uncertainty on business decision-making, but our forecasts remain roughly stable overall for 2019.”

July retail sales at electronics and appliance stores declined 2.3 percent from July 2018 but jumped 0.9 percent sequentially from June, said the National Retail Federation Thursday. Online and other non-store sales were up 19.3 percent year over year and up 2.8 percent from June, “likely boosted by Amazon’s Prime Day promotion,” said NRF. Retail sales across the board were up 5.6 percent year over year and 0.9 percent from June, it said. “July’s strong results are consistent with a confident consumer,” it said. “Households are in good shape with spending and that should continue as long as the labor market remains healthy. But it’s important to remember that today’s data is looking backward at what was happening a month ago. The impact of volatile financial markets and increased trade tensions in recent weeks may put a wind of caution in consumer spending as we move forward in 2019.”

Laptops, video content and science, technology, engineering and math products are becoming a crucial part of classroom education, CTA reported Tuesday, saying 89 percent of parents and 87 percent of educators agree tech products help students develop technological skills for the future. The study said 34 percent of parents and 39 percent of educators said tech is a distraction for students. Parents said the tech devices most important in encouraging children’s learning are laptops (81 percent), tablets (77 percent), web-based software (74 percent), desktop computers (70 percent) and STEM products (67 percent). The five technologies children use once a week or more for learning are video content (82 percent), mobile phones (76 percent), tablets (73 percent), laptops (62 percent) and email (49 percent), it said. The online studies presented findings of 1,005 parents of children in preschool through grade 12, polled July 9-14, and a survey of 502 teachers of children in preschool through grade 12 fielded July 10-17.

The average American nets about $32,000 annually from free online services, said an Internet Association report Wednesday. That includes benefits from “search, email, maps, video, e-commerce, social media, messaging and music,” IA said. The amount was based on how much a person would “need to be paid to give up a service.”

Consumer intentions to buy new TV sets was unchanged in July from June, according to preliminary Conference Board data released Tuesday. Nielsen canvassed 5,000 U.S. homes through July 18 and found 12.5 percent plan to buy a new TV set in the next six months, said the board. That was the same as in June, down from 12.6 percent in May and up from 11.7 percent in July 2018, it said. Consumer confidence rebounded in July after “an escalation in trade and tariff tensions” drove a sharp decline in June, it said: “Consumers are once again optimistic about current and prospective business and labor market conditions. In addition, their expectations regarding their financial outlook also improved. These high levels of confidence should continue to support robust spending in the near-term despite slower growth in GDP.”

Coresight Research projects 2-2.5 percent growth for 2019 back-to-school shopping, a “significant slowdown” from the 4.4 percent growth a year ago, said the market researcher Monday. Consumers are interested in “good deals,” and they plan to do most shopping in department stores followed by discount stores, it said. Apparel is the biggest shopping category for students through high school; electronics for college students, it said. Coresight didn’t respond to questions. The National Retail Federation’s July 15 report forecast a dip in total back-to-school spending but a higher average spend per family. NRF predicted an increase in average spending from $684.79 in 2018 for elementary through high school students to $696.70 this year. Fewer families surveyed had children in grades K-12, NRF said, bringing down total expected spending to $26.2 billion from $27.5 billion last year. Families with college students are expected to spend an average $976.78, up from last year’s $942.17; fewer survey respondents had kids attending college, bringing total spending projections to $54.5 billion, down from last year’s record $55.3 billion, NRF said. College shoppers plan to spend the most on electronics, an average $234.69, it said.

The global infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud-services market grew 31.3 percent in 2018 to $32.4 billion, up from $24.7 billion in 2017, said Gartner Monday. Amazon continued holding a commanding lead with nearly 48 percent market, followed distantly by Microsoft, Alibaba, Google and IBM, it said. "The cloud market’s consolidation favors the large and dominant providers, with smaller and niche providers losing share,” said Gartner. In 2018, the top five IaaS providers had nearly 77 percent of the global IaaS market, up from less than 73 percent in 2017, it said: “Market consolidation will continue through 2019, driven by the high rate of growth for the top providers.”

MVPDs increasingly are adopting a no-haggle policy for subscribers, meaning more cancellations but gains in revenue after accounting for content costs, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Sunday. Both Comcast and DirecTV seem to have gone the route of not offering special deals to keep subscribers after initial sign-up deal terms expire, even if it means cancellations, with the focus on high-spending customers showing a mindset that the pay-TV cost structure no longer works for customers "unwilling to spend big," he said.

Global semiconductor revenue will decline 9.6 percent this year to $429 billion, said Gartner Monday. A weaker pricing environment for memory chips types, plus fallout from the U.S.-China trade dispute and sluggishness in smartphone, servers and PC sales “is driving the global semiconductor market to its lowest growth since 2009,” said Gartner. The U.S.-China trade war “is causing uncertainty over trade rates,” it said. U.S.-imposed restrictions on sales to Huawei “will have a longer-term impact on semiconductor supply and demand,” it said. “We expect that high smartphone inventory and sluggish solid-state array demand will last for a few more quarters,” said Gartner.

June retail sales at electronics and appliance stores declined 5.8 percent year over year and were down 0.3 percent sequentially from May, said the National Retail Federation Tuesday. Overall retail sales for the month were up 2.3 percent from June 2018, but down 0.6 percent from May, said NRF. Online and other non-store sales were up 11.6 percent year over year and up 1.7 percent sequentially from May, it said. “These are impressive results showing that the consumer remains engaged and that consumer spending gave a boost to the economy in the second quarter,” it said. “The numbers are consistent with elevated consumer sentiment, healthy household balance sheets, low inflation and wage and job gains.” The growth in June compared with the same 2018 month “is particularly significant given that it comes on top of strong gains at this time last year,” said NRF. “While the prospect of tariff increases has subsided for the moment, trade uncertainties continue to weigh on the long-term outlook.”