Rebecca Day

Amazon told its Prime members Thursday in an email that the price increase it promised during an earnings call last month (CED Feb 3 p5) would take effect with their next membership renewal. The $99-per-year Prime membership fee will take effect March 20 for new members, while the increase for existing members will begin to kick in April 17 as members’ renewal dates come up, an Amazon spokeswoman told us. Thursday’s announcement gives Amazon a week to pull in new customers at the $79 rate.

Norwalk, Conn.-based Terra-San, a CD-ripping supplier that also sells pre-loaded iPods to consumers, has received cease-and-desist orders from Warner Music Group and the RIAA, owner Joel DeGray told Consumer Electronics Daily.

Nortek hopes for cost savings from more cross-selling opportunities across its product lines, CEO Michael Clarke said on an earnings call Wednesday. To date, the company has sold products “through the same channels and we don’t really benefit from those cross-selling opportunities,” Clarke said. The company is studying where wholesale and retail channels can achieve savings, he said. “Before, there wasn’t a lot of synergy between the businesses,” which, he said, “are not running independently now.” Nortek is looking at “linking home automation to intercom systems,” Clarke said, mentioning Nortek’s longstanding NuTone intercom brand. A product arising from the two segments would likely come to market “pretty soon,” he said, but said bringing new products to market takes longer than standard cost-reduction projects. Nortek is also looking to align with trends in the residential technology market by combining security and Web-based home automation, Clarke said. An early example of those efforts is a recently launched Z-Wave-based garage door opener that integrates with a home security and home automation system. The product is launching as part of Lowe’s Iris connected home products line, he said. Nortek has also been consolidating operations to achieve better economies of scale, Clarke said, and over the past two years it has cut the number of operations in the tech sector by six, he said. New construction in the U.S. is “expected to remain strong,” but it’s a small part of Nortek’s business which is driven by the retrofit market, Clarke said. The remodel market is expected to grow in 2014 but at a slower pace than new home construction, he said. Security and home automation are two-thirds of Nortek’s tech business, leaving the company “well-positioned” to take advantage of an expanding home security business, he said. For the quarter ended Dec. 31, sales were $548.9 million, vs. $505.4 million in the year-ago quarter, the company said. Net loss narrowed to $8.9 million from $12.5 million in the 2012 quarter, it said. Gross profit margin was 28.2 percent compared with 30.1 percent in the 2012 quarter. For all of 2013, Nortek reported a loss of $8.3 million, vs. a profit of $9.5 million a year earlier, it said.

"How do you get a New Jersey company to be sued in Utah?” Kevin Barnes asked Consumer Electronics Daily, following the news Tuesday that Lutron and Crestron settled a patent infringement lawsuit dating back to August 2009. Barnes, founder of Lifestyle Electronics, Orem, Utah -- a dealer defendant in the suit -- said, “Well, you grab three of their dealers, who have done almost no Crestron wireless at the time, and you list them on the lawsuit.” Prior to being named in the lawsuit, Lifestyle Electronics had sold just $1,400 of Crestron wireless products, Barnes said.

Pandora will stop releasing monthly audience metrics in June due to industry measurement changes it believes gives advertisers the tools they need to make side-by-side comparisons with radio listening hours, the company said. It historically released listening metrics to advertisers because there wasn’t enough acceptance of third-party metrics measuring Pandora listening hours, CEO Brian McAndrews said at a Raymond James Financial investor conference Thursday. “We wanted them to have the data they needed to make advertising decisions.” Triton Digital announced earlier this week that it had achieved accreditation from the Media Rating Council for local ratings, and a “milestone has been met,” McAndrews said. “Now there will be no dispute” about Triton’s measurement of Pandora hours versus local radio listening, he said. Listener hours for February were 1.51 billion, up 9 percent from February 2013, and the number of unique visitors was up 11 percent to 75.3 million, Pandora said. Comparisons between 2013 and 2014 were “unique,” because last year the company was trying to rein in listening hours to manage costs, “not a situation any business wants to be in where you're actually deterring people from using your product,” said McAndrews. Now that Pandora has turned a profit, it expects to invest more in marketing to drive its free, ad-supported model, which the company sees as a bigger revenue opportunity than its subscription base. McAndrews called the car market a “huge opportunity” for the company. In integrated car applications, where drivers use their smartphone for the content and a car’s controls to operate the thumbs-up and thumbs-down feature and station changes, the company has 4 million activations, up from 1 million a year ago, McAndrews said. The company is looking for further penetration in the connected car where the car serves as both the “brains” and control for Pandora service he said. Pandora will be part of General Motors and Volvo connected cars rolling out this year, he said.

U.K.-based e-commerce platform provider Powa Technologies launched a worldwide multifaceted “retail enablement service” that it hopes will energize the sluggish mobile commerce industry. The company’s PowaTag platform allows consumers to make e-commerce purchases via a smartphone app using barcode scans and audio and video watermarks that can be found in print, TV and radio ads, product packaging and retail displays. “It’s a transformative technology that allows consumers to buy what they see and allows merchants to engage with consumers in ways and in mediums that they haven’t previously been able to,” CEO Dan Wagner told us.

Netflix is “caught in the middle” of trying to provide a long-term positive viewing experience for subscribers with HD and “other high-quality but high-bandwidth uses of entertainment,” while also “being mindful of the environment we're in today,” said Chief Financial Officer David Wells during a Q-and-A webcast from the Morgan Stanley Technology Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco Monday. Wells was commenting on the deal in which Netflix will pay Comcast an undisclosed amount to ensure that its subscribers receive a faster streaming experience during peak viewing hours (CED Feb 25 p3).

Connected car activity is heating up this week at the Geneva International Motor Show, with automakers and electronics companies making technology announcements in advance of 2015 model year releases.

Amazon didn’t have “anything new to share,” an Amazon spokeswoman told us Friday in response to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report that the e-tailer will roll out Sunday merchandise deliveries in the St. Louis area on March 16. The Amazon spokeswoman told us to “stay tuned” as Amazon expects to bring Sunday delivery to a “large portion of the U.S. population in 2014.” Amazon announced in November that it was working with the U.S. Postal Service to deliver packages on Sunday, starting in the Los Angeles and New York metropolitan areas. Amazon Prime members, who receive unlimited, free two-day shipping on many products, can receive packages on Sunday in areas offering the service, Amazon said. Other markets mentioned for 2014 rollout were Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix. Amazon announced in early February that it plans to raise the price of its Amazon Prime subscription service an additional $20-$40 per year from its current $79 annual rate (CED Feb 3 p5). The company announced in mid-February an ambitious hiring initiative to add more than 2,500 new full-time positions across its “growing fulfillment network.” That’s in addition to 20,000 new hires in its fulfillment centers in 2013, it said. Amazon fulfillment centers are in Chester, Va., Coffeyville, Kan., Columbia, S.C., DuPont, Wash., Murfreesboro, Tenn. and Petersburg, Va.

Onkyo is working with U.K.-based Imagination Technologies on wireless music streaming systems and the “global expansion of High-Quality Audio,” the companies said in a news release Friday. High-Quality Audio is a download platform that Onkyo launched under the e-Onkyo brand in 2005, it said. Imagination Technologies licenses its software and cloud IP solution technology to semiconductor makers, network operators and OEM/ODMs. Imagination launched its Caskeid synchronized wireless multi-room streaming audio technology, which combines Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, last September.