Rebecca Day

The Navvo Group has recently begun shipping its Voco AV streaming players designed for standalone and multi-room applications. The company showed the products at CES (CED Jan 9 p7) and had planned to begin shipping product in February, CEO Wade Fenn told us. But while an Android app has been ready, the iPhone version just became available, he said.

EBay flipped the switch on the My Gadgets section of its e-commerce marketplace Thursday, offering users a personalized section on the website to help them manage gadget sales from one location.

Coming from two different angles, Showtime and LG joined forces to deliver an automatic content recognition (ACR)-based interactive TV experience that runs on smart TVs rather than second-screen devices. For LG, it could be seen as a way to preserve the vitality of the TV -- and LG’s proprietary LivePlus platform -- when its turf is increasingly threatened by anytime/anywhere connected devices. For Showtime, the new platform could be seen as a way to broaden the reach of interactive TV by bringing it to a larger, more mainstream audience.

U.S. homes that tune into family network programming or subscribe to premium movie channels are 20 percent more likely than other viewers to have their TV connected to the Internet, according to research from NPD. Family network viewers are 22 percent more likely to have a connection to the Internet via TV, followed by premium movie channel subscribers at 19 percent, found a survey of Internet homes, NPD said.

Samsung turned heads Tuesday with the unveiling of its KN55S9C 55-inch Curved OLED TV that will be available Wednesday from Samsung.com at $8,999.99, some $6,000 less than LG’s curved OLED TV that began shipping last month. “I thought it was going to be $10,000,” said an enthusiastic Robert Zohn, owner of Value Electronics in Scarsdale, N.Y. For a retailer, “$9,000 is a million times better than $10,000,” he said.

Value Electronics still expects Samsung’s 55-inch OLED TV to reach its Scarsdale, N.Y., store this week, owner Robert Zohn told us Monday, in advance of a Samsung Home Entertainment news conference scheduled for Tuesday in New York. Although the media invitation didn’t specify the featured product in what Samsung called a chance to see “what’s next in the world of home entertainment,” a slight bend to a TV shown in the invitation strongly hinted at a curved OLED TV. LG launched its 55-inch OLED TV earlier this month (CED Aug 5 p9) through select Magnolia Design Center stores at $14,999. Value Electronics had originally expected the Samsung 55-inch KN55S9, which Zohn told us would be also be priced at $14,999 (CED July 26 p9), to be in his suburban New York store Aug. 1. But Samsung changed the shipping schedule and Zohn subsequently gave us an arrival date of “on or about Aug. 14.” While Zohn reaffirmed the timing of the Samsung OLED TV delivery on Monday, he did not stick to the $15,000 price tag, suggesting it would now be lower. Zohn didn’t provide further details and Samsung didn’t comment.

Mad Catz may be forced to delay shipment of its M.O.J.O. “micro console” that’s at the heart of its nascent GameSmart initiative, said CEO Darren Richardson on the company’s fiscal Q1 2014 earnings call late Thursday. While a delay isn’t firm, the company doesn’t want to compromise the product at launch to meet a shipping date, Richardson said. “There are a couple of technical challenges that we need to overcome,” he said, calling it part of the “normal course” of bringing any “complicated product to market.” Some of the challenges are internal and others rely on third parties, he said. He cited the advantage of having a high-powered console in the market for Christmas and said “we're doing everything we can in our power to get this product to market for the holiday.” Meanwhile, Mad Catz earnings continued to be impacted by the transition to the next generation of console gaming products, Richardson said. The upcoming gaming console transition is also distressing sales of Mad Catz’s higher-priced audio products as some consumers “temporarily shifted purchases” toward lower priced products, said Chief Financial Officer Karen McGinnis. The company is continuing to focus on lower-priced products, such as its Kunai headsets, until the release of the next-gen Xbox and PS consoles create a market for higher priced accessories, she said. Sales of Mad Catz audio products dropped 9 percent in Q1 from the year-ago quarter, but the company’s strategy to expand beyond consoles “is paying off,” McGinnis said, as the company reported a 26 percent sales hike in products for the PC market including game-oriented R.A.T. mice, S.T.R.I.K.E. keyboards and F.R.E.Q. headsets, she said. While the company is “eagerly looking forward” to the launch of Xbox One and PS4 this fall, it’s leveraging its technology and “aggressively building a position” in the emerging smart device gaming market said Richardson. Xbox 360 has posted impressive numbers, selling more than 75 million units since it launched seven years ago, but Richardson noted there were “ten times that number” of smartphones and tablets sold in 2012 alone and 1 billion are forecast for this year. Smartphone and tablets are also gaining traction in emerging markets, where they are establishing themselves as “very capable platforms” for an assortment of entertainment including gaming, music, videos and social media, he said. He noted that the upcoming iOS 7 includes controller support, and while touchscreen games won’t be replaced “any time soon,” Mad Catz expects more games to include controller support as a result of “opening the entire living room gaming experience” to smart devices. The company’s GameSmart initiative is aimed toward that emerging opportunity, said Richardson. Net sales in the quarter ended June 30 dropped 14 percent to $18.7 million, as a 37% decrease in sales to North America was partially offset by sales increases of 3 percent in Europe and 24 percent in Asia Pacific and China, the company said. The quarterly net loss widened to $2 million from $1.7 million in the year-ago quarter, it said.

After pulling its Harmony Remote business from the selling block earlier this year after it was unable to fetch an acceptable price, Logitech reclassified its Harmony Remote assets back to goodwill and other intangibles from those held for sale, setting the carrying value at $2.5 million for goodwill and $1.6 million for intangibles, the company said in a 10-Q filing this week. Logitech had put its Harmony business up for sale in January but decided in Q2 not to sell the remotes business after concluding that the carrying value was less than fair value (CED July 26 p4).

CEA responded Wednesday to urging from Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for the TV industry to jointly address what he sees as security concerns in smart TVs (CED Aug 6 p1). “We appreciate Sen. Schumer’s concerns about consumers’ safety and privacy as they realize the many benefits of ’smart’ televisions, specifically those TVs equipped with embedded microphones and cameras,” CEA President Gary Shapiro said in a statement. “The consumer technology industry takes these issues seriously and constantly strives to ensure consumers have the opportunity to maximize and individualize control over their privacy and security as they use our industry’s products and services,” Shapiro said. The industry has to “move carefully in this area,” Shapiro said, to consider all concerns “and to strike the appropriate balance between allowing consumers to have control over their privacy and providing them with full access to useful product functions and features.” Eliminating video recognition from TVs, for example, “could impair a wide range of useful features such as gesture and facial recognition, interactive gaming and video communications,” he said. CEA is reviewing the issues and Sen. Schumer’s request in more detail, he said.

Disney CEO Robert Iger cited an “overwhelmingly positive response” from preview audiences to Disney Infinity, which is still on schedule to launch Aug. 18 after a two-month delay. Iger said on the company’s fiscal Q3 earnings call Tuesday that Disney is “very encouraged” by response from retailers, reviewers and consumers to the title. Disney pushed back the Infinity debut, scheduled for June, based on retailer feedback, and Iger said then the stay would make it unlikely that Disney’s Interactive division would break even this year (CED May 9 p4).