Cisco completed its all-stock acquisition of cloud company IMImobile for $730 million, said Cisco Friday. The companies will work together “over time” to integrate IMImobile’s products into Cisco’s, blogged Cisco Contact Center Vice President Omar Tawakol Friday. The two teams for the interim will function “separately” under his watch “in the spirit of supporting IMImobile’s existing strategic ambitions,” he said.
Coming off a record Q4, Walmart executives cited “aggressive” plans for e-commerce growth during a Thursday virtual investor event. CEO Doug McMillon noted it wasn’t the first place to go to buy products online, and the retailer “has to earn that” role: It requires the right assortment, price, service and on-time delivery, and “it takes some time to build those kinds of capabilities.” Revenue for the quarter ended Jan. 29 was $152.1 billion, up 7.3% from the year-ago quarter, the company reported (and see here). U.S. e-commerce sales jumped 69%. Revenue growth was below analyst expectations. “We know less than we typically do in a normal year,” Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs said, citing the economy, COVID-19, government stimulus and vaccines. The stock closed 6.5% lower at $137.66.
Q4 revenue at Shopify spiked 94% to $977.7 million, reported the company Wednesday. At the end of 2020, 1.7 million merchants were selling on the e-commerce platform, said President Harley Finkelstein on a quarterly call. Responding to a question on whether the growth in business creation spawned by COVID-19 is sustainable, Finkelstein noted the U.S. had more business registrations in Q3 than at any time since 2004 and said Shopify is seeing similar. The pandemic created a "catalyst," whether people needed to supplement their income or lost a job and needed to find something else, but “I do not think this trend is going away.” As countries roll out vaccines in 2021 and consumers are able to move about more freely, “the overall economic environment will likely improve,” said Chief Financial Officer Amy Shapero. Some consumer spending “will likely rotate back to offline retail and services," and the shift to e-commerce, which accelerated in 2020, "will likely resume a more normalized pace of growth,” said Shapero.
With COVID-19 vaccines being distributed, many businesses are beginning to prepare for a “hybrid work environment,” with some workers based in the physical office and others working from home for “the foreseeable future,” said RingCentral CEO Vlad Shmunis on a Q4 call Tuesday. As companies adapt to this new “work from anywhere norm,” digital transformation of business communications will become more critical, with “cloud-based communications solutions” enabling that, he said. “We are increasingly confident in the size of the opportunity.” The company’s annualized recurring revenue in 2020 grew 35% year over year to $1.3 billion, he said.
IHeartMedia will buy digital advertising and audience measurement company Triton Digital from E.W. Scripps for $230 million, iHeart announced Wednesday: IHeart "will now be able to provide audio content to producers and advertisers with an industry-leading full ad service package for streaming and podcasting." The deal is subject to regulatory approval.
Kroger teamed with Gauss to sell what they call the first smartphone-enabled COVID-19 rapid antigen test kits to patients nationally, they said Tuesday: The at-home test awaits Food and Drug Administration emergency use OK.
Hyper by Sanho introduced a dual wireless charging stand for the iPhone 12 and AirPods' wireless charging case. The MagSafe-compatible HyperJuice ($59) powers both devices simultaneously at 7.5 watts for the iPhone 12 and 3 watts for the AirPods with 20 watts of USB-C input, said the company.
There’s little appetite among U.S. marketers to board an airplane for business travel, even if their companies allowed it, and the biggest plurality (12.5%) thinks it will be September before business trips are reinstated, an Association of National Advertisers survey found. ANA canvassed 1,631 marketing professionals Jan. 18-29, finding 76% are barred by company policy from flying for business. When respondents were asked when they most likely would “feel comfortable” returning to in-person events if allowed to go, the largest proportion (31%) responded “sometime in 2022.” On factors that would make them “comfortable enough” to travel again, 75% of respondents said “being personally vaccinated” against COVID-19 would be the turning point, while 70% would be satisfied with “broad distribution” of the vaccine. A distant third comforting factor at 44% was better “understanding specific airline cleaning protocols.”
Affordable direct satellite connectivity to mobile devices, "one of the moonshot objectives" of the satellite industry for years, is feasible, and there's sizable work going on to adapt some 5G standards to non-terrestrial networks, blogged Northern Sky Research analyst Lluc Palerm Monday. "That the same off-the-shelf device that connects to a terrestrial station will be able to close the link with a satellite is no minor feat," said Palerm. "The good news is that major chipset manufacturers are embracing this opportunity."
Stay-at-home orders sent U.S. consumer spending on PC gaming hardware and accessories skyrocketing 62% last year over 2019 to $4.5 billion, more than double the total 2017 sales, reported NPD Tuesday. PC gaming accessories revenue growth exceeded that of PC gaming hardware, 81% to 57%, it said. “Consumers looked for ways to stay entertained while spending more time at home,” said Stephen Baker, vice president-industry analysis. NPD forecasts 3% revenue growth for PC gaming hardware and accessories in 2021 to follow the “historic” 2020, he said. “We do not expect ongoing incremental dollar increases, but rather a plateauing of demand at these new elevated levels.”