Customers on select Sprint and T-Mobile wireless plans are eligible for a free year of Apple TV+, said the carrier Monday. Beginning Wednesday, new and existing customers on Magenta or Magenta Max, Magenta 55+, Magenta Military, Magenta First Responders, Sprint Unlimited Plus, Sprint Premium and small T-Mobile for Business can redeem the 12-month free Apple TV+ offer, it said.
The Audio Expo North America (Axpona) show, scheduled for Oct. 28-30 in Schaumburg, Illinois, was canceled and rescheduled for April 22-24 at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel and Convention Center. “Throughout this spring and early summer, enthusiasm for AXPONA in October was sky high,” said Event Director Liz Smith and Sales Vice President Mark Freed in a letter to the Axpona community. They cited spiking COVID-19 cases, “concerns over personal health, the unpredictability of international travel restrictions and reinstated companywide travel bans.” Audio & Loudspeaker Technologies International didn’t comment, meanwhile, on reports that its ALTI Expo, slated for Oct. 24-25 in Orlando, was canceled. The website showed registration still taking place Monday with fees of $499 for members, $699 for nonmembers.
Data that will be collected through the emerging IoT will be transformative for many businesses, Bryan Tantzen, senior director in Cisco’s IoT Business Unit, said Monday at Fierce’s virtual Industrial IoT Summit. The transformation is just getting started and many companies are still using clipboards to record numbers rather than putting in sensors and doing automatic data collection, Tantzen said. “The promise of this new data is vast,” he said: “We think we can eliminate 80% of unplanned downtime. We can dramatically improve overall equipment effectiveness. We can even speed new product introduction.” In the post-COVID-19 era, businesses will focus on sustainability “so you can keep the lights on as a utility and make the grid more resilient,” Tantzen said. In factories, “when a robot goes down you no longer have to wait and fly in an expert,” he said. “You can virtualize that expertise and get remote … maintenance that can reduce downtime,” he said. The time is now to address security risks from the IoT and the automation, he said. “We’re seeing threats everywhere, not only malware,” he said. Most of the IoT is “a hard shell with a soft middle” and doesn’t have adequate security, he said: “That will not work going forward.” Looking at what the industrial IoT can do for a business shouldn’t start with use cases, said Saip Yilmaz, Black & Decker director-industry innovation. “Focus on your strategy, how you will compete in the market,” he said. “Thinking about the future state of your strategy really helps to set your goals,” he said. “Don’t become another data rich, information poor company,” he said. Understand the use case and then decide what technology would work best, advised Kervin Blanke, head of U.S. operations for Kinexon, an IoT company. There’s not “one sensor that’s going to do it all; it’s more complex than that,” Blanke said. Companies need a single platform that can tie all of their sensors together, he said. Lots of companies are investing in use of the IoT for predictive maintenance, said Markus Larsson, member of the senior leadership team at California’s Palo Alto Research Center. “The performance of what has been rolled out, broadly speaking, just hasn’t been good enough,” he said.
"Supply-side” semiconductor inventories remain “below normal,” but “long-term demand drivers are strong, fueled by memory-intensive AI computing,” said Applied Materials CEO Gary Dickerson on an earnings call Thursday for fiscal Q3 ended Aug. 1. Demand for semiconductors “is no longer about one or two killer applications, but rather an expansive structural shift in the economy toward digitization and automation,” he said. “Smart and connected devices at the edge not only consume more silicon, they are driving exponential growth in machine-generated data.” Though global consumption of silicon is accelerating, “adoption rates of new technology vary considerably by region,” said Dickerson. Applied estimates that by 2025, “China will have only reached the same levels of silicon spend per capita the U.S. saw in 2015, and India trails China by another eight to 10 years,” he said. As national governments “are increasingly recognizing the strategic importance of semiconductors,” and government R&D and production incentives become available in the U.S., Asia and Europe, “they can provide multiyear support as the industry moves from lean and just-in-time supply chains to more resilient, flexible and secure approaches, including regionally distributed capacity,” he said. But putting the right manufacturing infrastructure in place “is only one piece of the puzzle,” he said. “Investment in innovation infrastructure to lead in the development and commercialization of next-generation technologies is even more critical to winning the future.”
Nexstar bought online political news publicationThe Hill for $130 million, the broadcaster said Friday. The news site will create “synergistic opportunities” with Nexstar’s new cable news network, NewsNation, and local news stations, the release said. The Hill, which is primarily advertising supported, had 48 million average monthly users and 2.2 billion total page views in 2020, Nexstar said. Nexstar said it's “ideally positioned to accelerate The Hill’s growth and further penetrate the massive political news market to grow audience share and drive increased content monetization.”
Nvidia estimates the population of livestreaming gamers will soon exceed 700 million globally, while “the audience for global esports will soon approach half a billion people,” said Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress on an earnings call Wednesday for fiscal Q2 ended Aug. 1. Nvidia recorded $3.1 billion in gaming revenue for the quarter, up 11% sequentially from Q1 and 85% higher than in the year-earlier quarter, she said. Record revenue of $6.51 billion in Q2 was up 68% from a year earlier. Nvidia expects $6.8 billion in revenue, plus or minus 2%, for Q3 ending October, which would be a 44% increase year over year at the midpoint of the guidance. "Gaming demand is continuing to exceed supply as we expect channel inventories to remain below target levels as we exit Q3," said Kress.
With the market “uncertainty” hovering around COVID-19, Cisco is “closely monitoring the delta variant and its impact on customer spending,” said CEO Chuck Robbins on an earnings call Wednesday for fiscal Q4 ended July 31. “We are not seeing any additional impact on our business, aside from the components shortage we've been facing over the past several months.” Cisco expects the “supply challenges and cost impacts” to continue at least through the Jan. 31 end of its fiscal first half “and potentially into the second half,” he said. The company is navigating through the shortages by “leveraging our volume purchasing and extended supply commitments,” said Chief Financial Officer Scott Herren. The supply and demand “imbalances” in semiconductors and memory chips are turning into “higher component costs as we buy from those suppliers,” said Herren. “It takes a while for those costs to flow through our standard costing system and show up in the cost of goods sold.” Cisco imposed price increases Aug. 7 that were “very selective, very targeted, only on the products where we were seeing the higher component costs,” he said. The price hikes aren't motivated by driving “top-line” revenue growth “as much as they're motivated by offsetting some of the cost increases,” said Herren.
General Motors said Thursday it will add 5G connectivity from AT&T to its vehicles starting with some models in 2023. “This rollout is part of GM and AT&T’s broad strategy to launch the world’s largest fleet of 5G-enabled vehicles and the culmination of a two-year collaboration,” GM said. Vehicles with 4G connections will migrate to the new network infrastructure “when available,” the automaker said.
About 53% of consumers currently prefer online meetings and virtual conferences to meeting people in person, said an August study from Resonate on how the “delta turning point” is affecting American sentiment and behavior. Twenty-nine percent of respondents to a survey fielded July 14-Aug. 2 believe it will take a year for life to return to normal, up 44% since June; 12% said they didn’t believe life would ever get back to normal. Some 68% said they prefer to shop in store, aligning with trends reported this week by Target and Walmart, up 18% since June. Nearly 64% of respondents are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, nearly 20% plan to be within seven months, and 19.2% said they never will be. After a 46% drop in pro-mask sentiment in late June, Resonate found a 14% increase in the latest report. A third said they’re spending less than before the COVID-19 era; 23% are saving more.
Store traffic returned to Target "in droves" in Q2 as comparable store sales grew 8.7% from Q2 2020, the company reported Wednesday. Overall comp sales growth of 8.9% was driven by traffic, which had a 12.7% year-on-year increase, said CEO Brian Cornell on an earnings call. Digital comp sales growth slowed to 10% from 195% in COVID-19 pandemic-led Q2 2020. Target’s drive-up business continued strong growth, rising 80% for the quarter. It added 5,000 items available for pick-up and the ability within the app to designate an alternate person for pickup, in response to customer feedback. Order pickup grew 30%, while the Shipt delivery service dropped 20% year on year, after 60% growth a year ago, it said. New functionality in the Target app alerts customers to deals so they don’t miss out, said Chief Growth Officer Christina Hennington. When customers add items to their cart, the app will show them all the applicable Target Circle rewards program offers before they check out, she said. Shares closed 2.8% lower Wednesday at $247.55.