Employees’ sentiments are high for working from home after the pandemic, and management appears to support them, a Lenovo survey found. The PC vendor canvassed 8,500 respondents in the U.S., U.K. and 12 other countries Jan. 15 to Feb. 11, finding that 70% reported higher job satisfaction at home, with 56% feeling more productive than at the office. More than eight in 10 management respondents expect post-COVID-19 work to be remote “at least half the time,” it said. About 60% of employees canvassed would prefer working remotely at least half the time, and more than a third want to do so “most or all of the time,” said Lenovo. “This sentiment increases among workers in larger companies,” with about two-thirds of them preferring to work remotely at least half the time, it said. Work-from-home challenges abound, said Lenovo, with slow or unreliable internet “chief among them.” About half the employees in medium-sized businesses and 40% in small or very small businesses “report delays or challenges in getting any kind of IT support when needed,” it said.
Amazon’s getting NFL long-term media rights distribution agreements is a “big win” for the tech giant, LightShed Partners wrote investors Friday. The long-term media distribution rights agreements with Amazon, CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox and NBC cover 2023 through 2033, said the NFL Thursday. Amazon will be the “exclusive home of Thursday Night Football across hundreds of compatible digital devices,” said the league. LightShed called it “the day the multichannel TV bundle died.” The trajectory is clear, the analysts said, “and the proverbial ‘floor’ on multichannel video subscribers is far lower" than the 40 million-50 million LightShed had predicted due to the NFL. That’s now closer to 20 million, “as more and more marquee sports content (especially NFL content) becomes available outside the legacy multichannel bundle,” analysts said. With games on Amazon Prime Video, ESPN+, Paramount+, Peacock and Fox digital platforms -- in addition to NFL Mobile and digital platforms -- NFL games “are now available in more places and on more devices than ever before,” said the league. It said it continues to be “the only sports league that delivers all of its games" on free, over-the-air TV, while noting increased flexibility to watch Sunday and Monday night games. The pact sets the stage for Fox, the only major network without a subscription VOD service, to launch a subscription tier on Tubi that includes NFL programming, LightShed said. Citing the acceleration of cord cutting and legacy media’s “urgency to build their own streaming services and connected TV advertising presence,” LightShed expects all media companies to employ their simulcast streaming rights “sooner than later.” MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson agrees the distribution deals could accelerate cord cutting, he wrote investors Friday. He said the NFL is likely receiving about $10 billion a year, a sharp step up from the $5.6 billion now for the U.S. rights, with those higher NFL costs will likely mean higher affiliate fees being charged to distributors and local affiliates, leading to higher consumer prices. ACA Connects deems the distribution agreements bad news for cable subscribers, it said Friday. Broadcast networks and TV station owners will use NFL games and the threat of blackouts as leverage to drive up retransmission consent fees, it said, It applauded the reintroduction of the Modern Television Act by Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La. (see 2103110064). The bill would repeal parts of the 1992 Cable Act, including retransmission rules.
The U.S. domestic parcel market is expected to grow to 101 million packages a day by 2022, with e-commerce contributing 86% of the growth, said Brie Carere, FedEx chief marketing and communications officer, on a Thursday call for fiscal Q3, ended Feb. 28. E-commerce was about 21% of U.S. retail sales in Q4 2020, “significantly above the pre-pandemic level,” she said: “Some of our largest retail customers reported e-commerce growth rates in the high-double and even triple digits through 2020.” As the U.S. relaxes COVID-19 restrictions, “we recognize the potential for a short-term deceleration in e-commerce shopping,” she said. “However, we are very confident that e-commerce as a percentage of retail has a long growth runway.” The “long-term outlook” is for e-commerce revenue to rise at a 10% compound annual growth rate, she said. It’s launching FedEx International Connect Plus to serve e-commerce traffic between the U.S., Europe and Asia, she said. The stock closed 6.1% higher Friday at $279.58.
Discovery and monetization are challenges that streaming sports services face in the post-pandemic world, a Brightcove webinar was told Thursday. Even as fans turned to watching shows about sports in the absence of live sports, streamers, too, had a decline in time spent watching sports content, said Brightcove analyst Jim O’Neill. As live sports reemerged in the second half of 2020, more viewers turned to streaming, while traditional sports TV ratings flagged. “Traditional delivery of content, including sports, is being challenged" by desires to cut pay-TV costs and rising adoption of over-the-top video services, he said. The pandemic forced golf's U.S. Open from its familiar June slot to September, where it competed with other professional sports. “Nobody wants to go up against the NFL,” said Amanda Weiner, U.S. Golf Association senior director-digital media and ticketing. USGA's biggest challenge last year was losing the “at-work audience” that would sneak a second screen at work to watch, Weiner said. USGA launched its streaming app on Roku and Apple TV, adding Amazon Fire TV last year, to reach people "where they were," said Weiner. She said more is in the works. Livestreaming has become a critical way for USA Volleyball to reach fans amid spectator restrictions, said Chief Marketing Officer Kassidi Gilgenast. It’s a big change “to get our fans to the small screen,” said Gilgenast. USA Volleyball tried its hand at in-house streaming a few years ago but realized it needed partners, Gilgenast said. By providing a link that takes people directly to a match livestream, "we’re much more likely to convert that user, especially on the social side, to a viewer.”
The hybrid workplace is “here to stay,” and the quality of the employee experience, one year into the pandemic, "has never mattered more,” reported Citrix Thursday. The digital workplace tech provider hired OnePoll to canvass 7,250 employees in 12 countries, finding 52% say they're married to a hybrid model that lets them choose to work remotely or from the physical office each day. The poll found 16% indicating "no interest in returning to the office and would prefer a permanently remote role,” it said. Many were steadfast, with the three-quarters of respondents saying they would consider relocating “if they could perform their role to the same level without commuting,” said Citrix. Work-from-home fatigue is growing. Two-thirds say they're working longer than pre-pandemic and struggle to stay as productive. Distractions at home from kids and pets were the main productivity killers among 41% of respondents, followed by 36% who feel out of touch with colleagues and 28% who lack sufficient technology.
OLED microdisplay supplier eMagin expects to continue working in 2021 on “scalability” to bring its direct-patterning OLED process technology to consumer augmented- and virtual-reality headsets, said CEO Andrew Sculley on a Q4 call Thursday: “Our OLED microdisplays will satisfy the brightness, contrast, speed and resolution needed for AR and VR headsets.” The $4.4 million eMagin got in contract revenue last year “primarily reflected development work for a tier 1 consumer company for an advanced display design and proof of concept for a consumer AR/VR device,” said acting Chief Financial Officer Mark Koch. Bringing the project to the next layer of development will hinge on the tier 1 company finding a “mass production partner,” said Sculley.
T-Mobile customers with T-Mobile Tuesdays can get an enhanced Pandora experience with ad-free radio weekends, "Top Tracks" stations with music from popular SiriusXM channels and early access to SiriusXM original podcasts, said the carrier Wednesday. The offer will be available via the T-Mobile Tuesdays app starting Tuesday for customers who create or log in to a Pandora account.
“Macro events” of the past year helped “shine a light on the many benefits of the secular shift to the cloud and digital transformation,” said Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader on a quarterly call Tuesday. The company bills itself as a leading cloud-based “dynamic work" platform. When lockdowns began last March, customers went through “an initial adjustment period,” focused mainly on “business continuity and employee safety,” said Mader. They soon seemed "to recognize that this new normal compelled them to think differently about how they operate and which tools they would need to navigate a new reality,” he said. The COVID-19 enterprise response “proved that organizations have the capacity to adapt rapidly to changing conditions, even using change as an opportunity to more deeply connect individuals to their work and their company's missions,” said Mader.
Consumer technology shipments showed some resiliency amid large-scale disruption to production lines and supply chains caused by the pandemic, said ABI Research Wednesday. Shipments will “gradually recover in 2021 as the impact of the pandemic starts to wane, consumer confidence returns, and device supply chains bounce back,” said analyst Khin Sandi Lynn. She highlighted ultra low-power machine learning chipsets and devices supporting ultra-wideband (UWB) networks as major consumer technologies expected to “take-off” in 2021. Consumer devices supporting UWB, including cellular devices, smart home appliances and automotive, will reach 286 million units globally, said the researcher. Demand for wireless connectivity propelled shipments of Wi-Fi routers, wireless hot spots, gateways and Wi-Fi customer premises equipment last year, as consumers looked for more robust Wi-Fi networks to support home-based work and learning, streaming video services and online gaming, noted the analyst. She also sees 5G growth (see 2103170055).
The number of Americans who watch TV via cable or satellite plunged from 76% in 2015 to 56% this year, said a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults fielded Jan. 25-Feb. 18. Some 27% are cord-cutters, and 17% have never had a pay-TV subscription, it said. Seventy-one percent of those who don’t use cable or satellite TV services say they can access the content they want online; 69% say the cost of pay-TV is too high; 45% say they don’t watch TV often. The drop in pay-TV subscribers reflects the "changing landscape of connectivity and media," said Pew Wednesday, with internet streaming services like Netflix and Hulu growing in popularity, a trend accelerated by the pandemic. Demographics play a role, Pew noted, with 34% of respondents ages 18-29 getting TV through cable or satellite, down 31 points from 2015. Of the 30-49 age group, 46% get TV that way, a 27-point drop. Among those ages 50-64, 66% are pay-TV subscribers, down 14 points for the period; 81% of Americans 65 and older are pay-TV customers, down 5 points. About 53% of nonsubscribers 18-29 don’t have pay TV at home because they don’t watch TV often; for 30-49-year-olds, it's 47%, a third for 50-plus. Nearly 80% of nonsubscribers 50 and older gave cost as the reason, 72% of the 30-49 group and 57% for ages 18-29.