Rebecca Day

Consumers spent $204.5 billion online Nov. 1-Dec. 31, an 8.5% bump from 2020, amid inflation and billions of out-of-stock messages, said Adobe in its final 2021 e-commerce holiday sales season report Wednesday. December’s price increases marked the 19th consecutive month of year-on-year online inflation, following the record high of November 2021, when online prices increased 3.5% from November 2020, it said.

Voxx fiscal Q3 revenue fell short year on year, as several OEM customers temporarily halted production due to component and chip shortages, said CEO Pat Lavelle on a call Tuesday for the quarter ended Nov. 30. Revenue was $191.9 million, down nearly 5%, Voxx reported Monday.

A “mentor” with a passion for audio and dedication to success was how two former Denon America colleagues will remember Robert Heiblim, they told us Monday. Heiblim died Friday from complications of lung cancer (see 2201070053).

SVS Sound is planning its first in-wall subwoofer and its first product to be sold exclusively through authorized dealers, CEO Gary Yacoubian told Consumer Electronics Daily via a Zoom call from the company’s CES suite at the Venetian Thursday.

Sharp is planning to bring higher-end TV models to the U.S. market under the Aquos brand, after announcing Tuesday a line of mainstream 4K and HD Roku TVs for its 2022 return to this country, Sharp Home Electronics President Jim Sanduski emailed Tuesday. The Japanese electronics firm hoped to return to the U.S. market with its own high-end TVs in 2019 but scrapped plans (see 1910090016) when it couldn’t meet a holiday season deadline. Sharp’s initial focus in 2022 is on mainstream models in small, medium and large screen sizes, he said. Sharp chose Roku’s operating system for its smart TV platform in the U.S. (see 2201030051) due to its No. 1 market share and marketing partnership opportunities, Sanduski said. The agreement isn’t exclusive, and Sharp markets Android TVs in other parts of the world, but its focus for the U.S. is on Roku TV, he said. The mid- to large-size Roku TVs are being assembled in Mexico by Foxconn, which owns two-thirds of Sharp; the smaller models are being imported from China, he said. Sharp isn’t exhibiting at CES 2022 “for a variety of reasons,” he said, but it plans to be on the CES show floor “at a future date.”

The COVID-19 omicron variant will bring “uncertainty” to the economy in 2022, and could contribute to inflation, but it's “unlikely to cause widespread shutdowns or slowdowns” due to its “relatively mild” effects for fully vaccinated individuals, said National Retail Federation Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz Wednesday. Each successive COVID-19 variant has slowed the economy, but “the degree of slowdown has been less” with each one, he noted.

Samsung CEO Jong-Hee Han cited the importance of sustainability initiatives, “purposeful partnerships,” and customizable and connected technologies, in his pre-CES keynote Tuesday from the Venetian's Palazzo Ballroom.

Laser TV took center stage in Hisense’s virtual CES news conference, presented live from Mandalay Bay via a YouTube feed Tuesday.The Chinese brand will display 8K laser TV for the first time publicly this week at its Central Hall booth at CES, using a Hisense-developed 8K 120-Hz image-quality chip that can support 20,000 Mini-LED backlight partitions, said former LG executive David VanderWaal, recently named Hisense vice president-marketing, Americas.

Jumbo screen sizes, updated motion technology, features for gamers and competitive pricing headlined TCL’s 2022 TV lineup on the company’s prerecorded CES news conference Tuesday. TCL is working with Pixelworks and other entertainment companies to define and deploy TrueCut Motion, a new “motion ecosystem,” said Aaron Dew, senior director-product development. Describing TrueCut Motion as “holistic,” Dew said it gives content creators a new tool to “dynamically use motion to better express style, to immerse viewers in stories and to elicit emotion."

The Sharp TV brand will return to the U.S. with HD and 4K TVs integrating the Roku TV platform, said Roku Monday. Sharp Home Electronics President Jim Sanduski, in a statement, called the collaboration with Roku a “winning combination for our consumers.” Sanduski declined Monday to comment on additional plans for premium Sharp TVs in the U.S., saying he would respond to questions after the company’s announcement Tuesday. Sharp told us in May 2019 it hoped to return to the U.S. market with branded 8K and Aquos-branded 4K TVs, but it scrapped plans when it was unable to make deadlines for the holiday season, Sanduski told us before CES 2020 (see 2001030029). At the time, the Foxconn subsidiary studied the market and had talks with retailers, but cutthroat pricing in 4K TV scared the company off, said Sanduski. He cited “aggressive price drops” that began in spring and continued through fall. “At the end of the day, looking at the market, we couldn’t find a path of profitability,” he said then. Sharp-branded TVs were last in the U.S. market under a five-year 2016 trademark and licensing agreement with Hisense in which the Chinese TV maker produced and sold Sharp- and Aquos-branded TVs. That agreement was terminated two years early in 2019 (see 1905100067). Details and pricing of Sharp Roku TVs will be released later, the companies said.