Rebecca Day

The FTC sued Walmart in U.S. District Court in Chicago Tuesday, alleging the retailer allowed its money transfer services to be used by fraudsters, who “fleeced consumers out of hundreds of millions of dollars.”

More than three-fourths of consumers in a May Jungle Scout survey said their spending was affected by rising inflation, and a third said their personal spending declined, compared with about a fourth in a study of Q1 consumer shopping trends.

Amazon and Walmart promoted their use of AI and augmented reality for retail and online shopping in blog posts last week, joining Ikea by offering a mixed-reality shopping experience that uses an AI app to help shoppers place furniture virtually in their home spaces (see 2206220007).

Panelists on a Wednesday Aluma Insights webinar tackled the challenges subscription VOD providers are facing with implementing tighter account sharing strategies after years of looking the other way to grow subscriber bases.

After five years of growth, the fragmented smart door lock industry is facing barriers to wider and faster adoption, said Parks Associates analyst Jennifer Kent in a June white paper, co-authored by PassiveBolt smart lock tech company.

With the Matter protocol due to be released this fall, the Z-Wave Alliance is “doing our best to keep Z-Wave in the conversation,” Z-Wave Alliance Executive Director Mitchell Klein told us Thursday. Z-Wave isn’t directly compatible with Matter, but Z-Wave products should be able to be interoperable with Matter via “hooks” in the protocol that will allow non-Matter products to work with Matter-certified devices, Klein said. “There is a hook available to provide bridging in and out,” and Silicon Labs has done proof of concept of the Unify software developer kit software framework, said Klein, who also is Silicon Labs director-alliances strategy. The Z-Wave Alliance has a specification for building such a bridge on its roadmap, Klein said, because “the marketplace will demand some type of interoperability with Matter; otherwise, you’re talking about hundreds of millions of products going dark, or just basically resisting Matter completely.” Timing for a bridge hasn’t been made public, but Silicon Labs said last fall that more than 15 million IoT gateway products developed using Silicon Labs' Series 1 and Series 2 wireless solutions, at the core of the new Unify SDK, will be Matter-compatible once the protocol is approved for market availability. “Similarly, companies can choose to develop IoT products using the Silicon Labs Unify SDK for existing wireless protocols, including Zigbee and Z-Wave, and later leverage Unify SDK to easily activate Matter network communication on their product portfolios when the timing is right,” the company said then. The Z-Wave Alliance said Thursday the 4,000th product had been certified Z-Wave-compatible, but the Switzerland-based company, Hoppe Group, wants to delay announcing the product until its release on the market, due this fall, Klein said. The Hoppe product includes the Z-Wave Long Range specification.

Amazon announced July 12-13 for this year’s annual Prime Day sales event, with a slate of up to half-off Fire TVs as headliners. The Thursday announcement also spotlighted brands iRobot and Beats, and promised Amazon’s “lowest prices ever” for select Sony and Bose products.

A Netflix ad-supported tier could add about 4 million U.S. and Canadian subscribers next year, Cowen analyst John Blackledge wrote investors Wednesday. An ad tier could generate revenue per member of $17 monthly, with ad revenue of about $10 and subscription revenue of $7, Blackledge said. Cowen estimates 41% of existing Netflix subscribers would switch to an ad tier, which would imply a blended average revenue per user that’s 8% higher than Q1 levels for the U.S. and Canada. Long term, the ad tier could drive “significant” long-term revenue upside, he said, maintaining an “outperform” rating on the stock. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings floated the idea of lower-priced ad-supported tiers on an April earnings call (see 2204200002) after Netflix posted a 200,000 paid subscriber loss for Q1. The stock closed 7.5% higher Wednesday at $180.11. Netflix will release its second-quarter financial results July 19, said the company Wednesday. Its April forecast was for Q2 net subscriber losses of 2 million accounts on top of the 200,000 subscribers it lost in Q1.

CTA is partnering with the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) on a CES 2023 initiative to show the role of technology in support of U.N. efforts “to advance human security for all [HS4A],” CTA said Wednesday. Conferences and keynotes will highlight innovation and products that are improving people’s lives around the world, CTA said. “Tech innovation gives us the tools to work toward a better world and has always been the catalyst for historic change,” said CTA CEO Gary Shapiro.

Samsung maintained a commanding lead in U.S. smart TV market share in March, but the lead is narrowing, said James Muldrow, Comscore vice president-product management, on a Tuesday webinar on streaming TV trends.