Over three-fourths of respondents said at the end of 2020 that they shopped more online due to COVID-19, and 86% of those plan to continue shopping online post-pandemic, said delivery management software company Metapack. But 81% of online shoppers had a negative delivery experience in the past 12 months, up fivefold from the prior year, which could lead to “lost customers and irreparable brand damage,” said Chief Revenue Officer Bruce Fair. Sixty-four percent would shop “the same” in stores in the future, 31% less than before, 6% more. The report cited two RetailX global surveys of about 10,000 consumers.
Amazon contracted for nine United Launch Alliance launches for its Kuiper low earth orbit broadband satellite constellation, ULA said Monday. The launches, on ULA Atlas V rockets, will be from the Cape Canaveral, it said.
Roku completed the purchase of Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising business, announced last month (see 2103020047), including its video automatic content recognition and dynamic ad insertion (DAI) technologies, which will accelerate Roku’s launch of end-to-end DAI with TV programmers. Combining technologies will allow Roku to deliver benefits of TV streaming advertising to traditional TV, it said. Nielsen and Roku also formed a long-term strategic partnership to integrate complementary Nielsen ad and content measurement products into Roku's platform.
Staggering numbers stood out in Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ final shareholder letter as CEO, in Thursday's posting, citing the e-commerce pioneer’s revenue growth, employee expansion and towering stock price rise from its opening $18 per share valuation when it went public almost 12 years ago. Bezos will soon transition to executive chairman, relinquishing the CEO post to Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy. Of the company’s $386 billion revenue in 2020, $301 billion was value created, for consumer and AWS customers ($164 billion), employees ($91 billion), third-party sellers ($25 billion) and shareholders ($21 billion), said Bezos. The goal of a business “should be to create value for everyone you interact with,” said the outgoing CEO, who will hand over the reins to Jassy in Q3. Bezos calculated value to customers in terms of time savings. Customers complete 28% of purchases on Amazon in three minutes or less, and half of all purchases are finished in less than 15 minutes, said Bezos. He compared that time with “about an hour” shoppers spend in the physical store experience. He estimated a "conservative" $10 per hour in time savings. Bezos estimated the company’s value creation for customers using the AWS cloud computing platform last year at $38 billion, based on the assumption that operating in the cloud delivers a 30% improvement in costs, along with the increased speed AWS provides in software development. AWS revenue was $45 billion. Third-party seller profits from selling on Amazon were estimated at $25 billion-$39 billion, he said. Seven-eighths of the $1.6 trillion of wealth Amazon has created for shareholders since the stock began trading benefits pension funds, universities, 401(k) plans and individuals, he said. The stock closed marginally higher Thursday at $3,379.09.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plans to invest $100 billion over the next three years to increase capacity and support “the manufacturing and R&D of leading-edge and specialty technologies,” said CEO C.C. Wei on a Q1 earnings call Thursday. The world’s largest pure-play chip foundry expects the increased capacity to “improve supply certainty for our customers and help strengthen confidence in global supply chains that rely on semiconductors,” he said.
Qualcomm said it completed 5G data calls combining millimeter wave with frequency-division duplexing or time division duplex sub-6 GHz spectrum by using 5G stand-alone mode dual connectivity. It combined the company's Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF system and QTM545 mmWave antenna module inside a smartphone form-factor device, demonstrating the ability to aggregate low, mid- and high bands across global combinations, said the company Tuesday. Spectrum aggregation, including dual connectivity using mmWave and sub-6 GHz frequencies, is “critical to delivering multi-Gigabit speeds and massive capacity required for a new generation of consumer and enterprise applications,” said the company. Combining different types of radio spectrum will enable mobile 5G devices to achieve wired broadband-class speeds, even in challenging conditions such as crowded venues and transit hubs, it said.
AT&T plans to invest $2 billion over the next three years to “help address the digital divide,” the company announced Wednesday. AT&T said it will expand its services for low-income consumers and schools and is participating in the FCC's emergency broadband benefit program. “We believe that broadband connectivity is essential for all Americans,” said AT&T CEO John Stankey in a statement. The company also announced its Connected Learning initiative, a “multi-year commitment to help stem the tide of learning loss, narrow the homework gap, and create compelling educational content.” AT&T partnered with WarnerMedia to develop a digital learning platform and is launching 20 digital learning centers in underserved neighborhoods.
Roku updated its operating system, adding features that let customers get to content faster and customize the user experience, said the company Tuesday. Roku OS 10 improves network and input configurations and performance, it said, and adds support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 and HomeKit.
Microsoft expects its all-cash deal to buy Nuance Communications for $19.7 billion to close by year's end, said Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood on an investor webinar Monday. “Coming out the pandemic, we’re experiencing digital transformation on a scale never seen before,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “This is driving lasting structural change and accelerating digital transformation driven by industry-specific cloud solutions.” Nuance is building “the next-generation omnichannel customer engagement cloud service at a time when every business is reimagining how it interacts with customers,” said Nadella. He and other Microsoft and Nuance executives took no questions.
Intel “generally” opposes U.S. imposition of “unilateral export controls” on foreign tech companies suspected of threatening U.S. national security, said Tom Quillin, senior director-security and trust policy, at a virtual forum convened Thursday by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security to identify risks in the semiconductor supply chain. BIS said it will use feedback from the forum, plus comments received in its notice of inquiry, to help shape recommendations to the White House on President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order to relieve supply chain bottlenecks (see 2103110054). BIS export restrictions “place undue hardship on U.S. semiconductor companies, especially when similar items are available in foreign markets,” said Quillin. “The foreign availability of products and technology typically leads to the substitution of U.S-origin products and technology for comparable non-U.S.-origin items that are not similarly controlled.” He avoided mention of Huawei and other Chinese companies on the BIS Entity List.