Rebecca Day

LG and Samsung didn’t expand on a report from NPD DisplaySearch (CED Nov 6 p7) indicating that only 500 OLED TVs would reach the market by year-end. Dan Schinasi, Samsung senior marketing manager, told us the company is “still on track to launch OLED this year,” but said for competitive reasons that’s “the extent of our public comment at this time.” For LG, while it’s been the company’s “goal to introduce our OLED TVs to market as soon as possible, we've always been realistic that this is a very new technology,” a spokesman said by e-mail. The company will launch OLED TV “when we feel the product is ready,” he said. Timing, quantities and markets haven’t been finalized, he said. LG is in the “final stage” of assessing production yields for panels made at sister company LG Display’s South Korea plant, he said, and results of those studies will dictate exact launch date and the number of markets where OLED TV will initially be made available. The spokesman wouldn’t say how many of DisplaySearch’s estimate of 500 OLED TVs in 2012 would be branded LG, and said it’s “premature to say” what criteria dealers need to have to sell the product. Pricing wasn’t available and “it’s difficult to predict customer demand this early in the game,” he said. On LG’s commitment to OLED TV in light of the attention 4K x 2K is being given, the spokesman told us, LG’s OLED “will be clearly superior in terms of color accuracy, contrast levels, viewing angles and form factor. Any new paradigm-shifting technology brings with it new challenges. This is nothing new, we expected as much, and our commitment to OLED hasn’t changed.”

Weakness in technology hit office superstore chains hard in Q3, company executives said on earnings calls Tuesday, and it’s too early to tell whether recently launched Windows 8 can provide the jolt needed to turn around flagging PC sales.

Amazon is losing less money on the Kindle Fire HD than it did on the first-generation Kindle Fire, and Microsoft is making more on its Surface tablet than Apple is on the iPad, according to the IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service.

Skullcandy is looking to the high-end gaming headset market, higher priced over-ear headphones and international sales to offset lower average selling prices in earbuds and a “very promotional” retail environment going into the holiday sales season, CEO Jeremy Andrus said on an earnings call Thursday. Skullcandy is forecasting flat sequential revenue growth from Q3.

With the turn of the calendar Thursday, November again became Black Friday month at Amazon.com, which got an early jump on Black Friday last year, too. The e-tailer launched its Black Friday Deals Store Thursday, four weeks and a day before actual Black Friday, pushing its deal-of-the-day promotion along with limited-time doorbuster Lightning Deals and other bargain promotions. The deals will last through Black Friday weekend, the company said, and will cover electronics, toys and clothing, among other categories. Shoppers who click on a Black Friday Deals tab on the Amazon website are taken to a page that says: “Black Friday isn’t until the day after Thanksgiving, but since you're here already, looking for Black Friday deals, we got the deals going a little early.” According to a preview released by Amazon on Thursday, electronics promotions running through the month include Panasonic Viera ST50 plasma TVs and E50 LED TVs. Amazon pushed the Panasonic TC-P55ST50 55-inch plasma 3D TV for $1,147, down from the list price of $1,699. Panasonic, too, was dealing on the same model at its website, discounting the TV to $1,296. A Nikon 18x optical zoom point-and-shoot camera, showed a sale price at Amazon of $239, down from $349 at the Nikon website. B&H Photo was selling the Nikon S9300 with 18x optical zoom Thursday for $248, a price good through Nov. 17, according to the B&H website. Amazon’s Xbox 360 Holiday Value Bundle, meantime, includes the 250-GB Xbox console, Forza 4, one month of Xbox Live and an Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim download token. An Amazon spokeswoman told us Lightning Deals are special offers in the Black Friday Deals store and that overall Amazon will have “great deals and a massive selection” now through Black Friday. Products selected for the promotion are “the most anticipated and top-rated items” across categories, she said. As part of the promotion, Amazon launched an electronics gift list Thursday which spotlights new and “top-rated items, a lot of which we expect to be hot sellers this holiday,” the spokeswoman said. Those include tablets, TVs, cameras and laptops, she said. Amazon is also holding an electronics sweepstakes through Dec. 31, through which consumers can win a Kindle Fire HD or a $2,000 Amazon gift card.

Manhattanites are using technology as best they can to cope with life after Hurricane Sandy, we personally found this week. Although most Starbucks locations were closed as the storm approached Monday, opportunistic smartphone and tablet users were standing outside shuttered Starbucks locations that had Wi-Fi operating over backup power systems to get a free ride on the Internet. We ourselves used a variety of cutting-edge and legacy electronics to stay connected -- despite loss of power below 34th St. -- including a landline phone that still had power when the cordless phones went out. Some Verizon FiOS customers nearby weren’t so fortunate. Access to email, texts and Facebook messaging was critical when Verizon voicemail service was taken out by the damage to a lower Manhattan electrical substation. For us, an iPhone was a valuable communication lifeline, as was an Energizer Energi to Go backup battery that powered the iPhone for an extra day. New York authorities provide free bus service on Wednesday, and we took advantage by traveling to friends on 90th St. on the East side for a shower, heat, workspace and power outlets, but not without a 2-1/2-hour commute to make the roughly four-mile trip in gridlocked traffic. Fancy electronics were no substitute for a Black Diamond LED head lamp that lights up the stairwell 16 floors up in a Manhattan high-rise. “What adventure are you going on?” the clerk at the sporting goods store asked on Saturday when we bought the tiny lamp two days before the storm. “A hurricane,” was our reply.

Silicon Image upped its forecast for Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) chip shipments again for 2012, to 140 million from the 120 million predicted last quarter and the 100 million projected in January, CEO Camillo Martino said on the company’s Q3 earnings call. The momentum is being driven by smartphones and tablets, Martino said, but the company reported a growing number of TVs, AV receivers, pico projectors and “other displays” with MHL chips from manufacturers including Acer, Best Buy’s Insignia brand, LG, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba.

After announcing a multi-year deal with Warner Home Video to offer Warner video titles through its Redbox kiosks 28 days after release, Coinstar on its Q3 2012 earnings call last week proclaimed the physical disc alive and kicking. Redbox and Warner had parted ways in January after Warner said it would require Redbox to adopt a 56-day rental window to renew the company’s distribution agreement, leaving Redbox to patch together a workaround solution to secure Warner titles for its rental kiosks.

Of the $36 billion revenue Apple had in fiscal Q4 2012, $17.1 billion came from sales of 26.9 million iPhone handsets or iPhone accessories, a 58 percent jump in the category year over year, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said on the company’s earnings call Thursday. IDC’s most-recent estimates for industry-wide smartphone category revenue growth was 45 percent, Oppenheimer noted.

A “significant slowdown” in the global PC market took its toll on fiscal Q2 2013 sales results at Logitech, CEO Guerrino De Luca said on an earnings call Thursday. Sales in all of Logitech’s PC-related categories came in below forecast, De Luca said, slammed by the “deteriorating conditions” in the global PC market in the last 90 days.