In an ending of the ill-fated Redbox Instant by Verizon streaming video service, which shut down Oct. 7, the venture’s attempt at closure with its customers hit a snag Wednesday when subscribers tried to follow an email invitation to switch their purchased content to M-GO. We were one of the Redbox Instant by Verizon pioneers who jumped on instructions in the “friendly reminder” it offered by email Wednesday to “provide access at NO COST to you for movies you purchased from us” through an agreement with M-GO. If movies we had purchased couldn’t be transferred to M-GO, we were to qualify for credit in the M-GO store for the price we originally paid for the movie, the venture said. As a bonus, we were to receive a $5 welcome credit from M-GO. We followed instructions to visit the M-GO page, where we were instructed to enter our email address. But a system glitch prevented subscribers from entering email addresses and completing the process, which included access to the names of movies that subscribers had purchased from Redbox Instant by Verizon. Wednesday and again Thursday, Redbox Instant by Verizon sent out an apology email: “You recently received an email from us reminding you to act by March 20, 2015 if you wished to establish an account with M-GO to access and watch your Redbox Instant by Verizon movies," it said. "Unfortunately, due to a technical error on our part, the consent page used an invalid email address instead of your Redbox Instant by Verizon email and did not allow you to properly enter your email address before completing the consent process." After apologizing, Redbox Instant by Verizon assured customers that their account information was "safe and secure.” Redbox Instant by Verizon will be “re-sending this reminder email to you soon, after we’ve corrected the migration function,” it said. We decided not to wait for an invitation and tried the link again, finding that the email address issue was corrected. A confirmation email thanked us for our consent to switch our purchased movies to M-GO and said we’d receive instructions within the next 24 hours on “how to complete the migration process.”
Smart watches will lead growth in the global wearables segment, which is forecast to jump from 17 million units shipped in 2013 to 187 million units in 2020, a Tractica report said. “Wearable computing is moving past the early adopter stage and the industry is beginning to see the first glimpses of how it will have a profound influence on the future of human interaction with technology.” The researcher defined wearables as a mix of different devices that track health, record events or provide notifications. Analyst Aditya Kaul referred to the upcoming Apple Watch as a “hero device” and predicted Apple will “provide the momentum and scale to drive significant awareness and growth in the sector” as it did with smartphones and tablets. Tractica predicts smart watches will experience growth through 2020, with a “strong surge” in demand this year followed by a “healthy growth rate” through the forecast period. Shipments of fitness trackers will continue to grow, it said, but at a slower pace as their functionality is increasingly supplanted by smart watches.
The Michael Kors brand is leading the wearables effort for the Fossil Group and plans to bring product to market later this year, Fossil CEO Kosta Kartsotis said on an earnings call Tuesday. The company is working closely with the Kors brand on wearable technologies and is in talks with all its brands “about the appropriate time to bring out some products,” he said. Fossil's other brands include Burberry, Diesel and DKNY. Kartsotis sees wearables as a key element in company strategy as it looks to leverage its fashion position “to become the point where fashion, design and technology converge.” He said Fossil is working with Google and Intel (see 1501080038) on the electronics side, and wearables are a part of the company’s long-term vision. “Someday, every watch we make could have some type of technology in it,” Kartsotis said. “I expect at some point all our watches will have enhanced technology, whether it's sensors, communication,” he said, and an app community also could develop around its platform. The watch business is just a small percentage of “the huge amount of spending” taking place in technology, including phones, iPads and service plans, Kartsotis said. If just a small percentage of the total consumer technology spending moves into the watch business, it could have “a dramatic impact on the growth of the category and make it more relevant,” he said. “We are sitting right in the middle of something that could be much larger.” Fossil is hoping for a receptive market in millennials who “largely have grown up without watches” and believes connected technology can make a watch “more relevant to their lives,” Kartsotis said. “They had a cellphone when they grew up” and didn’t necessarily wear a watch, he said. “With the branding and technology coming into play, we think we've got a big opportunity.” Investing in wearables enables Fossil to leverage its global platform, which includes numerous brands and 30,000 points of sale worldwide, Kartsotis said. He referred to the company's "mindshare" in the market and said Fossil can "make great-looking products that have an emotional attachment to customers that love brands but also have a little extra functionality." The plans extend beyond watches. "We are looking at both display items like smart watches but also non-display items like jewelry and potentially bracelets," he said. Eventually, connected technology "will probably impact all brands," he said. Speaking on the economics of wearable technology, Kartsotis said one of the “exciting things” about wearables is that “as technology gets better, battery life is going to be better … functionality is going to be better and the economics will be better because as the quantities grow, then the costs, etc., come down pretty quickly. So that's partly why we think it's a very compelling long-term opportunity.”
Despite security concerns, mobile commerce is growing at nearly three times the rate of overall commerce worldwide, said research from PayPal and Ipsos released Wednesday. A survey of more than 17,500 consumers from 22 countries found that smartphone users wanted to use their phones for payment options such as tapping a smartphone at the cash register to pay (16 percent), or use an app or browser to order ahead of time (15 percent). While 21 percent said they didn’t use their smartphones to shop due to security concerns, the top complaint, stated by 34 percent of respondents, was that the screen size is too small. “We are on the cusp of the mobile-first era,” said Anuj Nayar, PayPal senior director-global initiatives. “We’ve seen our mobile growth rise from less than one percent of our payment volume in 2010 to more than 20 percent in 2014.” Mobile commerce is still small compared with online purchases made using laptops, desktops and notebooks, but the “prevalence of mobile shopping is quite significant,” a PayPal release said. Consumers in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were most likely to purchase something online using a smartphone, the release said. Online shoppers globally preferred to purchase an item from an app compared with a browser, but with the “advent of low cost mobile phones, large phone screen sizes and mobile device security improvements, the barriers to mobile commerce will decrease,” Nayar said.
The growing use of IPTV devices will lead pay-TV middleware providers to create a unified, multiscreen experience for viewers, a Frost & Sullivan news release said Wednesday. In 2014, the IPTV market had $1.05 billion in revenue, said a Nov. 27 study on the global pay-TV middleware market from F&S, which develops growth strategies for businesses. IPTV revenue will increase to $2.03 billion by 2020, the study said. Rising subscriber churn and demand for over-the-top (OTT) subscriptions has put pressure on pay-TV operators, it said. Flexible consumption models using OTT and advanced pay-TV middleware are needed, it said. Pay-TV middleware providers will see more opportunities in emerging markets like Africa and India, which are moving toward pay-TV “IPfication,” it said. Markets in North America and Western Europe have hybrid cable and satellite deployments, it said.
Three in five Americans and Germans replace their smartphones for upgraded functionality or because they “just want a new device,” said a Gartner survey released Wednesday. That is contributing to a worldwide market for refurbished phones sold to end users that’s expected to reach 120 million units and equivalent wholesale revenue of $14 billion in 2017, up from 56 million and equivalent revenue of $7 billion last year, Gartner said. Consumers in mature markets are upgrading smartphones on average every 18-20 months, Gartner analyst Meike Escherich said, and of the replaced devices, 7 percent are recycled, 23 percent are given to other users and 41 percent are traded in or sold privately. With nearly two-thirds of replaced smartphones being reused, continued demand for high-end used devices will increasingly affect new product sales, leading phone providers to look for opportunities in the secondhand market, Escherich said. In North America and Western Europe, the market for refurbished phones is forecast to be worth $3 billion this year, growing to $5 billion in 2017, with buyers attracted to used high-end devices that they wouldn't have been able to buy at the original selling price. The growing number of privately sold phones will stir up competition in the take-back market and drive wireless providers and refurbishers to grow business through aggressive marketing campaigns and compelling incentives that appeal to tech enthusiasts, Escherich said. Fifty-three percent of U.S. respondents who identified as enthusiasts said they would replace their smartphones in the next 12 months, while 56 percent said their current phones were less than a year old, she said. Tech enthusiasts are important to handset makers because their trade-ins provide channel partners with hardware that can be reused for warranty replacements, she said, “and for extending the brand reach" to users who can’t afford new phone pricing. The survey was done in June 2014 among 5,600 U.S. and German consumers.
Apple’s decision to scale back on the number of health sensors originally planned for the Apple Watch is likely cause for relief among consumer health device makers, Parks Associates analyst Harry Wang said in a blog post. Wang cited a Wall Street Journal story Tuesday that said efforts to integrate multiple health sensors to detect functions including blood pressure, skin perspiration and heart activity were scrapped for reasons including reliability, complexity and required regulatory oversight. The news is likely “welcoming” to health device makers “nervously watching and waiting for the Apple Watch’s impact to unfold,” Wang said. He compared the arrival of the Apple Watch to the iPhone that has “rendered so many single-functional device categories into obsolescence and left many traditional consumer brands in shackles.” Sources in the medical field have feared that the arrival of the Apple Watch will “kick off the era of multi-sensor health monitoring design” and a subsequent consolidation of brands that manufacture single-function ECG meters, blood pressure monitors and pulse oximeters, Wang said. Health device makers were “excited about the prospects” of increased visibility that Apple Watch could bring for the various tools available for health monitoring on one hand, but also concerned that “less sophisticated” technologies could confuse consumers with “poorly collected data and attract unwanted regulatory scrutiny to this market” on the other, Wang said. The analyst applauded Apple for “following its principle of not bringing inferior user experience to the market.” He said the decision illustrates that the health monitoring technology “still has frontiers to conquer,” since a company like Apple was challenged to deliver a “perfect 10” experience to the market. Apple representatives didn't comment.
LoopPay, the mobile wallet solutions provider, will become a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics America, the companies said in a Wednesday announcement. Terms weren’t disclosed. "Through this deal, we can significantly accelerate our mobile commerce efforts," Samsung said in a statement. "LoopPay’s outstanding leaders and team have deep-rooted relationships with banks, card networks and merchants that will complement those Samsung has established over the years.” LoopPay’s technology turns existing magnetic stripe readers at the point of sale into “secure, contactless receivers,” the companies said. The technology has the potential to work in an estimated 90 percent of existing POS terminals, with no investment in new infrastructure required by the retailer, they said. Best Buy and Walmart have been retail holdouts on Apple Pay since Apple introduced the service last September. Neither retailer has explained its decision not to support Apple Pay, except to say it lacks near field communications POS terminals in its stores (see 1409150051). “Today is a great day for LoopPay and all those who have supported us over the last few years,” LoopPay CEO Will Graylin said in a Wednesday blog post. LoopPay’s “vision of inspiring consumers to transition from a physical wallet to a truly digital wallet will continue,” Graylin said. “I’m most excited that Samsung shares this vision and has chosen to help change how we shop and pay for goods and services.”
NBCUniversal launched a TV Everywhere initiative, which lets consumers in markets with NBC-owned TV stations access NBC's live programming and VOD content in and out of their homes on multiple devices, including computers, smartphones or tablets, NBC Owned Television Stations said in a news release Wednesday. To access a full live stream of a local NBC-owned station, customers for example can go to nbcnewyork.com or download a station's app and select "Watch Live TV Now," it said. Customers can download the NBC app or go to nbc.com. Live NBC programming is available through 10 NBC-owned stations, including KNBC Los Angeles, KNSD San Diego, WCAU Philadelphia, WMAQ-TV Chicago, WNBC New York and WRC-TV Washington. NBC affiliates will launch throughout the year, it said.
Comcast added live streaming networks to the Xfinity TV Go app and website, including AMC, BBC America, Fox Deportes, MoviePlex, Showtime, Univision Deportes and The Weather Channel, it said in a news release Tuesday. The app now has more than 70 channels and 21,000 VOD options, it said.