Rebecca Day

The Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) announced the consumer brand name for its wireless power technology. The brand, Rezence, derived from resonance and essence, underscores the magnetic resonance technology behind the standard and its ability to charge “all types of electronic devices,” Geoff Gordon, A4WP marketing committee chair, told Consumer Electronics Daily. “The new Rezence brand is a promise to consumers that devices carrying the Rezence logo will be interoperable with one another,” said Chang Yeong Kim, head of the digital media and communication R&D center of Samsung Electronics, in a statement. Samsung is a founding member of A4WP along with Qualcomm, and prior to the development of the Rezence standard, Samsung devices with wireless charging capability used the Qi technology backed by the Wireless Power Consortium. The first Rezence-compatible products are due on the market in early 2014, including transmitters for furniture, Gordon said. Rezence works by magnetic resonance to extend wireless power applications “beyond the mat,” allowing charging technology to be built into “almost any surface,” according to data. Benefits of Rezence charging solutions include easy integration into existing furniture and surfaces in retail and other public locations; incorporation of “broadly adopted” wireless technologies, including Bluetooth Smart, which allow manufacturers to minimize hardware requirements; flexibility for industrial designers to design charging applications into vehicles, furniture and other surfaces; and for consumers, “a true drop and charge experience,” including the ability to charge multiple devices simultaneously, said A4WP. Devices can include smartphones, tablets, laptops and Bluetooth headsets, it said. A4WP is holding its third plugfest this week to test for interoperability, Gordon told us. At CES A4WP will show demos from different companies along with an ecosystem with embedded furniture and automotive consoles, he said. A major PC OEM will announce its membership in A4WP at CES, the first notebook company to join, he said.

CE sales jumped 10 percent to $5 billion during Black Friday week (Nov. 24-30), according to NPD, marking the first time in three years that U.S. CE sales grew by double digits for the period, which was padded with additional Thanksgiving Day shopping hours. Overall ASP (average selling price) for the CE category grew $6 year over year to $87.21, analyst Stephen Baker told us.

The Green Monday opportunity brought a smattering of CE manufacturers and retailers to the discount table Monday. Panasonic offered price cuts up to 67 percent at its online store, and of the 15 plasma TV models listed at the Panasonic site, only seven models were still in stock in the last month that the company is manufacturing plasma TVs. All seven remaining models at the Panasonic e-commerce site were cart-priced, indicating the sale price is below the company’s own minimum advertised price. Panasonic’s tag for the top-line TC-P65ZT60 65-inch TV was $3,388, down from a suggested retail price of $4,099, while Amazon went down to $3,226 for the same model, vs. what it listed as a standard price of $3,999. Abt Electronics took the sale price down further to $3,198, and Best Buy cart-priced it at $3,199, plus $69 shipping. Paul’s TV & Appliances, meanwhile, showed the TC-P65ZT60 for $3,799, some $400 above Panasonic’s own sale price.

AUSTIN -- Differences among the three major wireless charging standards have narrowed somewhat over the past few months, with the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) and the Power Matters Alliance (PMA) adding working groups to study magnetic resonance, a key element of the Alliance for Wireless Power’s (A4WP) standard. Just don’t expect the groups to announce unification anytime soon, said consortium heads who addressed the wireless charging standard battle on a panel at the International Wireless Power Summit.

AUSTIN -- A standards battle, consumer awareness, and real-world use cases are among the challenges facing the fledgling wireless power industry, said attendees at the International Wireless Power Summit. The market shifted from having wireless charging products largely in development to 300 companies reaching the supply chain in 2013, said LeRoy Johnson, senior director-emerging technologies for home furnishings and commercial fixture manufacturer Leggett & Platt, which chaired the event.

Azione Unlimited President Richard Glikes urged electronics integrators to ratchet up labor rates, in an open letter warning of a “clock on profitability and hardware.” Citing threats from cloud storage and home control apps, Glikes compared current home AV and control hardware to the “cassette and 8 track of the past” that will soon be gone from the market due to declining margins. Labor is “the one thing you can’t substitute,” Glikes said, saying custom electronics dealers “don’t charge enough” for labor and “don’t manage it well.” Glikes suggested an hourly labor rate of $149, comparing the service aspect of custom electronics to the plumbing and electrical professions. “Does your plumber or electrician have any compunction about charging you a flat fee to enter your home regardless of problem, time, or materials?” Glikes asked. Customers pay it because “that is the way they conduct business,” he said. We asked Glikes about the conundrum of charging high labor rates for service and maintenance for products that are increasingly seen as replaceable and cyclical, and he said, “A $10 light switch costs over $100 to be installed. A $50 faucet can cost $150 to be installed.” On the need for installers in the age of do-it-yourself home control products found at Lowe’s and simple multi-room audio systems from Sonos, Glikes said, “A Kia will get you to the same destination as a Mercedes but the experience is not the same.” Azione dealers’ affluent clients “have more money than time” and are willing to pay to have electronics “designed, installed, and serviced well,” Glikes said. Azione’s spring conference in Las Vegas (March 19-21) will have a roundtable on managing and making labor profitable, he said.

Thanksgiving Day accounted for 12 percent of in-store sales over the four-day Black Friday weekend, up from 3.6 percent in 2012, according to retail tracking service ShopperTrak. Thanksgiving Day in-store receipts totaled $2.6 billion, compared with Black Friday volume of $9.8 billion. Sales tailed off in stores to $6.2 billion Saturday and $3.7 billion Sunday, according to data. Compared to last year, store traffic for wireless and electronics products fell 6.5 percent for the four days, while apparel traffic grew 9.4 percent, ShopperTrak said. Overall, store traffic slipped 4 percent -- an estimated 1.8 billion store visits -- from the comparable 2012 weekend, ShopperTrak said. Thanksgiving Day accounted for 10 percent of the four-day weekend’s retail traffic, it said.

CE retailers may have sold as many as 7 million TVs online and in stores during the four-day Black Friday weekend (CED Dec 3 p1), but overall TV profits remain an issue for the industry in the holiday season pricing cycle, said NPD analyst Paul Gagnon in a blog post. According to NPD’s TV cost modeling, average margins for vendors at key sizes are “in the low single digits at best, and mostly negative,” and retailers are making half what they made a decade ago on flat-panel TVs.

Consumers doing their Cyber Monday research saw some inconsistent markdowns likely due to minimum advertised pricing versus suggested retail, our scan of sale prices showed Monday afternoon. Walmart listed the Samsung UN46EH5000 46-inch LED TV at $478, which the website said was a 50 percent price reduction from $949. But a look around the Web found the same 46-inch TV at Best Buy for $479, down from what Best Buy said was a regular price of $629. B&H showed the same 46-inch Samsung model for $477, down from $697, and TigerDirect used Walmart’s approach, showing it at a $949 list price, with a discount to $477. Samsung showed the model on its own e-commerce website at $479, down from $949, through Dec. 2, with shipment after Dec. 16, it said. Elsewhere, standout Cyber Monday electronics deals were led by Amazon’s $50 slice off the Kindle Fire HDX tablet, bringing the price to $179 with free shipping. Best Buy tried to lure customers to stores offering a $10 gift card (up to $50 worth) for every $100 purchased at bestbuy.com with the in-store pickup option. Best Buy deals included the LG G2 smartphone for free with two-year activation through AT&T, Sprint or Verizon; a Fujifilm FinePix S4530 digital camera bundle -- including 8 GB SD card and carrying case -- marked down $210 to $119; and an Insignia 37-inch LED-lit LCD TV chopped by $100 to $199. According to BradsDeals, Walmart.com was the only website offering pre-orders of the next shipment of Xbox One consoles. Walmart was offering the Xbox One Call of Duty bundle for $617 including shipping while supplies last, with shipping expected on Dec. 16.

ST. LOUIS -- Late-night mystery deals at two St. Louis-area electronics stores didn’t elicit the frenzied response that doorbuster come-ons have wrought historically, we found in a tour of Best Buy and h.h. gregg stores Thanksgiving night into Black Friday morning.