Rebecca Day

Pandora’s new advertising program, Promoted Stations, is an effort to “connect advertisers in a more native environment,” said Dominic Paschel, Pandora vice president-corporate finance, on a webcast of the Wedbush Transformational Technologies Management Access Conference Wednesday. Kleenex, Skechers, StubHub, Taco Bell and Toyota are among the first 10 national advertisers to join the program, currently in a beta launch, designed to help drive advertisers to custom content, the company said in a news release.

Chromebooks became a bit more powerful Tuesday with the launch of Dell and Acer models with Intel Core i3 processors that claim performance speeds two to four times faster than 2013 models. Intel said the additional horsepower enables “extremely responsive” devices that deliver a smooth surfing experience even with multiple tabs of rich content open. Chromebooks, based on Google’s Web-based Chrome operating system, have been the darling of the sub-$300 PC market, offering an alternative cloud-based computing experience between that of a tablet and a laptop at a value-driven price point.

Nortek’s Q1 loss narrowed to $8.6 million from $15.1 million in the year-ago quarter on sales of $550 million, up from $519 million, the company said on an earnings call Tuesday. Main contributors to the operating loss were $3 million of higher product development costs, a $2.5 million increase in depreciation and amortization expense related to the acquisition of 2Gig last year, a drop in sales of AV distribution products and “inefficiencies experienced during the transition of certain logistic activities to a third-party logistics provider,” said Chief Financial Officer Al Hall. A “significant amount of orders” from a major security and home automation customer scheduled for Q1 was pushed to Q2, he said.

Gregg Steinhafel, who stepped down Monday as Target chairman, president and CEO, could reap some $9.2 million as part of an officer deferred compensation plan (ODCP), assuming it was a voluntary termination, said Janney Montgomery Scott. A report by Janney Monday called Target’s ODCP an “obscure compensation package” that Target closed off to new participants in 1996. Steinhafel joined Target in 1979.

The Target credit card security breach late last year resulted “in a significant number of new credit cards” issued to Redbox customers and likely increased the company’s new unique credit cards in the quarter, Outerwall said in its earnings summary late Thursday. Unique credit cards renting from Redbox during Q1 grew by 2.6 percent compared with Q1 2013, and high-frequency renters generated approximately 60 percent of revenue, the company said.

Control4’s Q1 loss narrowed to roughly $539,000 in Q1 2014 from $1.5 million in the 2013 quarter, while revenue grew 20 percent to $31.9 million from $26.6 million, the company said. On an earnings call late Thursday, CEO Martin Plaehn outlined the company’s three-pronged growth strategy that focuses on developing products and software with “ever-improving capability” that are easy to use and reliable, improving the breadth and efficiency of sales channels and expanding commercial relationships.

Harman revised its revenue outlook north for fiscal 2014 to $5.27 billion, its second guidance revision for the fiscal year. The company projected revenue of $4.7 billion in August and upped the figure to $5.1 billion in January. All three company divisions had double-digit growth in fiscal Q3, said CEO Dinesh Paliwal. Sales grew 32 percent to $1.4 billion with net income of $73 million versus $35 million in the year-ago quarter, the company said.

Dolby scaled back mobile licensing revenue projections by 10 percent for the current quarter, it said on an earnings call Tuesday, citing omission of Dolby technology from the Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone, which began shipping in April. Chief Financial Officer Lewis Chew said Dolby is “working through our arrangements with Samsung” for mobile technologies and that Dolby Digital Plus is one of several third-party features in the Galaxy S4 that weren’t carried over to the Galaxy S5.

Sony Electronics President Mike Fasulo will give the opening keynote at CEDIA Expo Sept. 10-13 in Denver. Sony has continued to have a strong presence at CEDIA Expo with AV gear even as other major TV makers have avoided the custom electronics industry’s trade show in recent years amid a climate of shrinking margins and strained marketing budgets. Last year, LG held an event off-site to promote its latest 4K TVs and has had a presence both on the floor and off-site over the years, said John Taylor, LG vice president-public affairs. Taylor wouldn’t comment on LG’s CEDIA Expo plans for 2014 for competitive reasons but told us the upscale CEDIA consumer base is important to LG, “particularly with Ultra HD and OLED.” Samsung told us, “Due to the timing of our product announcements for 2014, Samsung will not attend this year’s CEDIA Expo.” A spokesman for Vizio told us the TV maker has held private meetings at CEDIA Expo in years past but wouldn’t discuss upcoming marketing plans for this year’s event, citing company policy. Panasonic, Samsung and Sharp have cut back from CEDIA Expo to varying degrees over recent years, with none of the three exhibiting in 2013. Panasonic and Sharp didn’t respond to queries about their CEDIA plans for 2014, but neither company is listed among the exhibitors at the CEDIA website. According to CEDIA, Sony was one of the “key manufacturers” that exhibited at the first expo in 1990 and “has played a pivotal role in the custom install industry since then.” In a prepared statement, Fasulo said the keynote at CEDIA Expo gives Sony the chance to “exclusively deliver information to home technology professionals” that will help them provide “the best home entertainment experience possible.”

Samsung’s current UHD TV promotion for its HU9000 series TVs -- a free 4K video pack with five movies and three documentaries -- is an incentive for consumers “to purchase our most premium series of TVs during certain periods,” Dave Das, senior vice president-home entertainment and marketing, told Consumer Electronics Daily. The deal applies to Samsung’s curved UN55HU9000, UN65HU9000 and UN78HU9000 TVs bought between April 27 and June 30, 2014, with the 78-inch model due to ship in June. The deal doesn’t apply to the less expensive line of flat UHD TVs, which cost $1,000 less in the 65-inch screen size, Das said. On whether the promotion will be offered to buyers of the flat series of 4K TVs, Das said he couldn’t comment, but customers who buy Samsung flat 4K TVs can buy the video pack for $299, he said. Das confirmed that customers who bought the UN55HU9000 and UN65HU9000 TVs prior to April 27 are not eligible for the promotion. He wouldn’t say how many video packs Samsung expects to give away. Dealers have reported some customer confusion over the introduction of curved 1080p TVs last summer in OLED models from LG and Samsung at roughly the same time that 4K technology emerged. Das said Samsung’s customer feedback shows consumers haven’t been confused over the shape or resolution of newer model TVs and cited “a phenomenal uptake” of curved TVs in the U.S., Korea and Germany. On whether the company could extend the current video pack promotion or the $500 price cut on the HU9000 series, Das said he couldn’t comment. He cited NPD figures indicating Samsung holds 47 percent U.S. market share in UHD revenue for 2014. NPD told us the leading Ultra HD TV makers are, in order, Samsung, Sony and Seiki, saying it can’t publish company sales numbers. According to NPD data, fewer than 100,000 4K TVs were sold in the U.S. from April 2013 to March 2014. Meanwhile, according to NPD DisplaySearch, curved TV display shipments are forecast to reach nearly 800,000 units globally in 2014, and are expected to exceed 6 million units by the end of 2017. As a design differentiator, curved TV shipments are expected to peak in LCD models in 2016, while OLED models will boost curved TV shipments in 2017, DisplaySearch said.