Rebecca Day

Zagg cut financial guidance for Q4 based on lower sales of its high-margin invisibleShield screen protector products and “lack of sales execution,” said CEO Randall Hales on the company’s Q3 earnings call Tuesday. Chief Financial Officer Brandon O'Brien cited “missed sales opportunities in the third quarter,” and said Q4 sales will fall below targeted levels, leading to a revenue guidance downgrade for the holiday quarter to $212 million-$218 million versus previous estimates of $245 million-$252 million.

Staples is opening on Thanksgiving for the first time this year, according to published reports and a petition posted at Change.org by a Staples employee at a Tampa store. Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only two holidays of the year that the chain has closed in prior years, the employee said.

Directed has become the latest company to go after the mainstream home security market, launching Viper Home, a monitoring service expandable to home control that leverages the company’s connected car technology. Service providers including AT&T, Comcast and Cox are extending their broadband connections to get into home control and security, while Home Depot is using its relationship with do-it-yourself homeowners for its line of security and lighting products. Similarly, Viper sees a natural integration of connected car and home technologies, Viper Vice President-Product Development James Turner told us.

Ads and offers for Black Friday and other promotions are heating up, we found in a scan of retailer and deal websites Monday. Retailers are stepping up timed gift card giveaways in exchange for minimum purchase levels, hoping to put consumers in the shopping spirit early.

It’s Black Friday selling season, making it also Black Friday petition season at Change.org, whose online tool enables its 45 million users to post petitions about causes important to them. As of Monday afternoon, 15,348 users had signed a petition posted by Patricia Stumpff of Dayton, Ohio, asking Target to “keep all stores closed on Thanksgiving Day and to open the stores for Black Friday at a reasonable hour” so consumers “can be together with their family and friends on Thanksgiving.” Defining a holiday as “a day set aside by custom or by law, in which normal activities, especially business or work, are to be suspended or reduced,” Stumpff said Thanksgiving Day is a federal holiday and Target “should recognize it too.” A spokeswoman for Change.org told us the Thanksgiving shopping issue has been a lightning rod for the past two years. In 2011, Anthony Hardwick, a Target employee from Omaha, Neb., gathered 200,647 signatures on his Change.org petition when the company announced it planned to open at midnight on Thanksgiving for the first time, the spokeswoman said. That petition inspired more than 150 other petitions from across the country urging other retailers to “Save Thanksgiving,” she said. When Target announced last year that it would open even earlier, at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving night, Casey St. Clair, a Target employee from Corona, Calif., gathered 376,836 signatures on her Change.org petition, the spokeswoman said. That campaign inspired more than 160 other petitions to retailers. Target didn’t immediately comment on complaints about Thanksgiving hours or whether any number of signatures would cause it to reconsider opening stores on Thanksgiving. The Change.org spokeswoman said the organization doesn’t limit the number of petitions on a given issue. “Given the number of petitions launched and signed around the ‘Black Friday creep’ the past two years,” she said, “we expect to continue to see new petitions created” as Thanksgiving approaches. New petitions related to Thanksgiving and Black Friday are hitting Change.org “almost every day,” she said. As of Monday afternoon, 17 petitions on the subject had amassed 19,322 signatures. Thanksgiving/Black Friday petitions can be monitored at http://chn.ge/16tfjrj.

Control4’s 21 percent Q3 revenue growth in its core North American market was offset by “more modest” international growth of 11 percent, which CEO Martin Plaehn said on an earnings call was due to “growing pains and some turbulence” in China due to changes in the channel model. Plaehn said the disruption from the transition to a direct dealer model from a two-tier distribution strategy was expected but “more pronounced” than forecast.

"Continued headwinds” are expected in the TV category through the holiday season, which has led manufacturers to take a “pretty conservative approach” to supply, said h.h. gregg CEO Dennis May on an earnings call Thursday. With TV makers shipping TVs to meet projected lower demand, if the season turned out to be “unexpectedly positive,” then inventory would be constrained because the industry isn’t “building to anything like that,” May said.

Panasonic confirmed long-rumored reports that it’s exiting the plasma business. “In order to fundamentally restructure the display panel business, optimize that business, effectively utilize its management resources and further improve the financial situation of the company, Panasonic decided to cease production of plasma display panels in December this year and to stop plasma business operations in March 2014,” a spokesman told us Thursday in a statement.

Affordable Android tablets are projected to be among the hottest selling CE gifts this season, and Lenovo seeded the market Tuesday with its offerings at a media event in New York. The $249 and $299 tablets were due to go on sale Wednesday at Lenovo.com and at third-party retailers Best Buy, Newegg and Tiger Direct, with an exclusive at Best Buy for the 8-inch model, Stephen Miller, Lenovo brand ambassador, told us. The Best Buy website promoted the iPad with Retina display on its splash page Wednesday morning, and a search for “Yoga” brought up Lenovo’s Yoga Ultrabook instead, along with a long list of yoga DVDs led by Jillian Michaels’ Yoga Meltdown. We found the 8-inch model at BestBuy.com only after a targeted search for “Lenovo Yoga tablet.” Lenovo is making money on the devices, said Miller. “We're not trying to go out and be a price leader for the sake of buying a market.” The company wants consumers to see Lenovo as “a cool brand” and one that people “fall in love with and keep for five or 10 years,” he said. On how Lenovo will make the Yoga tablets stand out in a crowded category this holiday season, Miller said unique features including 18-hour battery life and a kickstand that allows versatile positioning will “give salespeople something to talk about.” The battery is stored in a cylindrical section on the side of the tablet, which presenters used as a handle for holding the tablet while taking photos with the five-megapixel camera. Miller positioned the Yoga models as Android tablets for those “without a lot of money to spend,” as well as tablet veterans. “In North America, there’s not a lot of first-time buyers left,” he said. “Almost everybody who wants a tablet has owned at least one.” Tablet buyers may have shared one in the past, but buyers generally have experience with tablets, Miller said. Company research indicated battery life is a top priority for tablet customers, Miller said, so the company included a “notebook-style” lithium-ion battery that “doubles or triples” the battery life of standard tablets, he said. The battery case doubles as a stand, he noted, positioning it as a value-add for consumers who won’t need to buy an additional stand. He touted the “multi-mode” capability of the devices, which can be used in “hold, stand and tilt” positions. The tablets have Dolby Digital 5.1, quad-core processors and 16 GB internal memory, expandable to 64 GB via micro SD. The tablets weigh 0.88 and 1.33 pounds, according to literature.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook Media subsidiary took aim at Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite Wednesday with the release of the 6-inch Nook GlowLight, which the company announced at a price of $119 with “no annoying ads.” The 6-inch Kindle Paperwhite is available for $119 at Amazon with ads -- which Amazon calls “special offers” -- and $139 without. The newest Nook GlowLight e-reader, which began selling Wednesday, is 15 percent lighter than the Kindle Paperwhite, Barnes Nook Media said. The device is “built to last” with a silicon trim that’s said to provide “extra protection against falls.” At Amazon.com, some reviewers of the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight complained of a fragile screen that cracked easily when dropped, with similar complaints noted by reviewers at bn.com. One Nook customer referred to a “tear showing up in the back of the screen allowing light to leach through when using the Glow Light.” The re-engineered display area of the new GlowLight device provides “extra durability” to make it easier to tote along, Nook Media said. The new Nook GlowLight can hold 2,000 books, up to 80 percent more content than the Kindle Paperwhite, according to literature. Nook Media is extending the comparison contest to its website, where it charts the differences between the two products. The chart shows the Nook GlowLight at 6.2 ounces versus 7.3 ounces for the Paperwhite with a disclaimer that “Actual size and weight vary by configuration and manufacturing process.” The chart gave both devices a battery life rating of 8 hours, also with a disclaimer: “With GlowLight on at the default brightness setting, a single charge will last over 1 month with wireless off based on ½ hour of daily reading and one page refresh per minute. A single charge lasts over two months with wireless off and GlowLight off based on ½ hour of daily reading time and one page refresh per minute. Battery life depends on device settings, usage, and many other factors. Battery tests conducted using specific units. Actual results may vary.” Nook Media’s Simple Touch with GlowLight is still being sold, for $99 at bn.com and $89 at Amazon, we found Wednesday.