Frontier expects to emerge from bankruptcy April 30 (see 2103250059), the company announced Friday. It's forming a new eight-member board (see personals section for board members). The telco has "stabilized its business and recapitalized its balance sheet, while making significant progress on the early stages of implementing our initial fiber expansion plan,” said incoming Executive Chairman John Stratton. The company will hold a call April 30 at 10 a.m. EDT. Communications Workers of America, which represents 8,000 Frontier employees, said in a statement it intends to "hold the company accountable to commitments that the union secured on jobs and improved service for customers."
LG smart appliance owners can now reorder laundry detergent, water filters and other consumables by linking their Amazon account in the LG ThinQ app, said LG Thursday: LG’s 2020 and 2021 Wi-Fi-enabled dishwashers, washing machines, dryers and refrigerators can signal Amazon when supplies run low.
Electronics (28%) are projected to be a leading driver of $28.1 billion in Mother’s Day 2021 spending, said the National Retail Federation Thursday, citing results from a Prosper survey of 7,818 U.S. adults April 1-9. That’s $1.4 billion more than last year, when most Americans were under lockdown. Consumers plan to spend an average of $220.48, a $16 increase; 34% plan to shop online. Though people indicate growing comfort with activities such as traveling and dining out, “there is still a lot of uncertainty,” said Prosper Executive Vice President-Strategy Phil Rist.
Netflix ruled out streaming competition for Q1's subscriber forecast miss (see 2104200076), said co-CEO Reed Hastings. “We really looked through all the data, looking at different regions where new competitors are launched, are not launched, and we just can't see any difference in our relative growth.” The business is “intensely competitive, but it always has been,” he told investors Tuesday. “We've been competing with Amazon Prime for 13 years, with Hulu for 14 years. It's always been very competitive with linear TV, too. So there's no real change that we can detect in the competitive environment.” It “really boils down” to COVID-19, said Chief Financial Officer Spencer Neumann. The pandemic continues to have a big global impact “and for us, at a minimum, creates just some short-term kind of choppiness in some of the business trends that we see,” he said. The stock closed down 7.4% Wednesday at $508.90.
SoundHound expanded its voice AI platform to 22 languages in a plan to add even more, blogged the company Wednesday. Houndify's speech-to-meaning and deep meaning understanding, plus advances in automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding, track speech in real time.
Roku is rebranding as "Roku Originals" the content it acquired with the Quibi buy in January (see 2101080028), said the company Wednesday. That will also be the brand name for future original programming on The Roku Channel, its ad-supported offering.
Citibank contacted customers Wednesday pitching a new video banking service as a “comfortable and easy way to connect.” Customers can schedule a video call to bank with a branch team “securely,” receive assistance with an existing account or open a new one, it said. In our search Wednesday, video bankers’ hours were listed as 9 a.m.-4 p.m. EST Monday-Friday. A chat representative confirmed that during daylight saving time, a video appointment booked for 10 a.m. would take place at 9 a.m.
Netflix had 3.98 million paid net additions in Q1, nearly 34% short of its Jan. 19 projection of 6 million and nearly 75% below the 15.77 net adds in Q1 2020, when the service thrived amid lockdowns. It’s forecasting a million Q2 paid net adds. Netflix finished Q1 with 208 million paid memberships, up 14% year over year but below its January guidance forecast of 210 million, it said Tuesday. “We believe paid membership growth slowed due to the big Covid-19 pull forward in 2020 and a lighter content slate in the first half of this year, due to Covid-19 production delays,” said the shareholder letter. “We continue to anticipate a strong second half with the return of new seasons of some of our biggest hits and an exciting film lineup. In the short-term, there is some uncertainty from Covid-19; in the long-term, the rise of streaming to replace linear TV around the world is the clear trend in entertainment.” The stock fell 10.4% to $492.34 at 5 p.m. EDT.
Apple showed off its newer chips amid moving some chipmaking away from more established semiconductor manufacturers. Its Tuesday launch event showed the first iMac and iPads to use Apple’s M1 chip, and its latest smartphones include 5G. CEO Tim Cook gave a sneak peek into the second season of Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso before handing off to Cindy Lin, director-program management, who unveiled the next Apple TV 4K ($179). The streaming media player has power “that smart TVs just don’t have," she said. It's based on the A12 Bionic chip, used in the latest iPhones, and brings a “massive upgrade” to a TV, said Lin. The latest Apple 4K TV steps up to high-frame-rate Dolby Vision HDR at 60 frames per second, making content look more lifelike, she said. Apple is working with Fox Sports, NBCUniversal, Paramount+, Red Bull TV and Canal+ as they begin to stream in high-frame-rate HDR, said the company. Videos shot on iPhone 12 Pro can be displayed in 60 fps Dolby Vision with AirPlay via the new streamer. A new color balance feature in Apple 4K TV works with an iPhone to improve TV picture quality, said Lin. The company also introduced Apple Podcasts Subscriptions. Pricing is set by creators.
NFL Network and NFL RedZone will join Hulu + Live TV by Aug. 1, they said Tuesday. A priority at NFL Media is “broadening the distribution platforms for NFL content,” said Chief Operating Officer Hans Schroeder. Terms weren't disclosed.