Rebecca Day

Production issues leading to supply shortages of Barnes & Noble’s Simple Touch with GlowLight e-reader had “significant” impact on Nook segment revenue in fiscal Q1, said CEO William Lynch on the company’s earnings call Tuesday. “Sub-optimal production yields” led to shortages of Barnes & Noble’s highly rated Simple Touch with GlowLight throughout all retail channels for the entire quarter, Lynch said.

CHESTERFIELD, Mo. -- A CEA-sponsored Demo Days event, “Catch Football Fever Like Never Before,” hit a surprising snag at the independent AV specialist The Sound Room last week when store staffers discovered that the featured football app providing stats, player pictures and score updates was available exclusively only on Samsung TVs. For The Sound Room, the problem was that the retailer doesn’t carry Samsung TVs, and President David Young told us it wasn’t worth bringing in several Samsung models to show off the football app just for the event held on Friday and Saturday.

Toshiba said it has developed a high-iron-concentration samarium-cobalt magnet with properties superior to the heat-resistant neodymium magnets currently used in some motors. Toshiba’s samarium-cobalt magnets are free of dysprosium -- a rare earth mineral that’s a key component of heat-resistant neodymium magnets -- which is in short supply and increasingly expensive, the company said. The samarium-cobalt magnet is designed for motors that need to combine high heat resistance with high performance and compact size, Toshiba said. The company said it has verified the performance of the new magnet in motors for autos, locomotives, machine tools and elevators, claiming it has achieved performance at a level that surpasses that of the heat-resistant neodymium magnet of the same size. Toshiba plans to start mass production of the magnet at the end of its fiscal year and promote its use “in all applicable equipment.” Toshiba didn’t respond to our questions about possible CE applications for samarium-cobalt magnets and whether they, or a derivative material, can substitute for neodymium magnets used in loudspeakers, cellphones and hard drives. Neodymium shortages resulting from quotas put in place by the Chinese government sent prices soaring exponentially last year, causing in some cases 10-20 percent pass-on price increases at retail (CED Aug 31 p1). The shortages also led CE manufacturers to hunt for neodymium substitutes. Harman was hit especially hard by the neodymium price hikes, which at one point last year had reached 1,000 percent, said CEO Dinesh Paliwal. In February, Paliwal blamed neodymium costs for a 3.5 percent margin decline in its Lifestyle division and a 1.1 percent margin drop in its Professional division during fiscal Q2. Paliwal said in its fiscal Q4 earnings call last week (CED Aug 13 p1) that Harman has weathered neodymium issues through price increases passed on to customers, although margins were still dinged by neodymium costs for the quarter in both Lifestyle and Professional divisions. He said Harman was in “advanced development” in material sciences to find a substitute “to replace neo with better acoustics capabilities and design changes,” and he didn’t elaborate on the material. Harman didn’t respond to questions about those substitute materials by our deadline.

Target pushed its electronics trade-in program in an email blast to its customer list Friday. In advance of the launch of the iPhone 5, the company is just winding up an iPhone trade-in program that ends Saturday. The limited-time promotion, which began Aug. 12, delivers gift cards of $150 for any iPhone 4, $100 for any 3GS and $50 for any 3G to customers who bring trade-ins to stores. We typed in the three criteria for a 32GB iPhone 4S: in good working order, fully functional no cracked display, and received a card value of $245.

Coinstar will leverage its kiosk installations with recycled electronics businesses as disc rentals begin to decline, CEO Paul Davis said during the Canaccord Genuity Annual Growth Conference webcast Thursday. Citing the upcoming Redbox Instant by Verizon business that gives Redbox both digital and physical disc presence, along with eight new ventures in the works, Davis said the company isn’t “sticking our head in the sand” but is looking at other products that over time will enable the company to “repurpose” Redbox kiosks.

Mobile phones and tablets accounted for 9 percent of online spending in Q2, according to comScore’s “State of the U.S. Online Retail Economy Q2 2012.” For the year, e-commerce retail sales are up 16 percent to $87 billion, said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore, on a webcast, and online retail is growing at nearly four times the rate of total consumer spending. In Q2, 15 percent growth in e-commerce was seven times higher than the growth in consumer spending in comparable categories, Fulgoni said, saying e-commerce now accounts for roughly $1 or more out of every $10 of discretionary spending.

Bob Scaglione will leave as Sharp’s chief marketing officer within the next several months as part of a restructuring that eliminates overall corporate marketing, returning those responsibilities to individual business units, a spokesman said. Six positions were eliminated as a result, the spokesman said. Scaglione, a 23-year veteran, had headed Sharp’s corporate marketing group that was responsible for the company’s U.S. business. Scaglione started at Sharp in 1989 as AV district sales supervisor, joining the company from Abraham & Strauss. He was named chief marketing officer in 2010. With Scaglione’s departure, Mark Viken, vice president-CE brand marketing, and Mike Marusic, senior vice president-marketing and business solutions in the imaging and information division, will take up his responsibilities. In addition to chief marketing officer, among the other positions cut was director of public relations, which was last held by Jeffrey Leopold, who was appointed late last year. Other Sharp executives whose positions were eliminated in the restructuring, sources said, include: Neil Lattner, senior director=advertising; Sam Ingram, director-digital marketing; Susan Gentile, digital marketing manager; Chris Scirocco, promotions manager; and Ellin Everson, public relations manager.

Autonomic is the first CEDIA-member manufacturer to announce an UltraViolet device license, which has been issued for the MMS-5AV media server due to make its video debut at the CEDIA Expo next month (CED June 22 p5), Autonomic said Wednesday. According to Autonomic CEO Michael de Nigris, UltraViolet fits with the company’s objective to “aggregate audio and video content into a single cohesive library” for its customers and to make media available “when and where our customers want it.” Supporting UltraViolet’s cloud-based digital movie platform is “consistent with the types of relationships we have initiated with our audio partners for streaming content,” he said. Media server company Mozaex plans to seek a license for its media server, too, but “since we already support Ultraviolet with our support of Vudu (which supports Ultraviolet and who is a UV licensee), there really is no immediate requirement that I am aware of to get a UV license any more than anyone selling a PC with access to Vudu,” Mozaex CEO Douglas Kihm told us by email. A spokesman for media server company Kaleidescape said his company has joined DECE but has not yet demonstrated an UltraViolet implementation. UltraViolet representatives didn’t respond to questions by our deadline about the number of UltraViolet hardware licensees or whether a server company needs a license if a content partner is a licensee.

Spectra7 Microsystems, comprising Fresco Microchip, RedMere Technology and Chrysalis Capital VIII, has secured a first closing of $11.1 million in venture capital from Celtic House Venture Partners, Ventures West Capital and EdgeStone Capital Partners, the companies said Tuesday. Spectra7 and Fresco Microchip had expected to raise $10 million when they said last month they'd combine (CED July 18 p5). Spectra7 CEO Tony Stelliga told us the funding will be used to develop silicon that’s “high-frequency-aware,” enabling high-resolution 4K displays and tablets to operate at the level of resolution “we're envisioning we'll see,” while integrating an expanded number of radio technologies. Already, “we're seeing over a dozen radios in next-generation tablets and smartphones,” he said. The radios don’t all run at the same time, he noted. But 50-60 percent run simultaneously, he said, citing Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NFC, over-the-air tuning and others. Pixel bandwidth on high-resolution displays is so high it interferes with the radios in a similar way to how a microwave oven can interfere with a handset, he said, “but at an exponentially higher level.” To address these interference issues, Spectra7 is developing “frequency planning” that will be done dynamically, in real time, in silicon rather than through software. “The silicon will be aware of what radio is on and what the resolution of the display is and what it should do to prevent interference,” said Stelliga. The 7 in Spectra7 refers to the interference that will eventually occur when tablets incorporate seven radios in a 7-inch tablet in a compact space where the radios can’t be physically isolated from each other, he said. “It’s a problem we're on the cusp of,” Stelliga said, “but it’s just a matter of time” before it happens. With this round of funding and an additional round down the road, “we'll accelerate the development of high-bandwidth, high-resolution, frequency-aware semiconductor devices that enable screens to run at 4K resolution without interfering with the radios,” he said. Spectra7 will restructure its focus and add an engineering facility in Silicon Valley for the effort, which will join two existing facilities in Irvine, Calif., and an analog plant in Cork, Ireland, he said. Products are expected to hit the market in 2014, he said.

Worldwide sales of mobile phones slipped 2.3 percent in Q2 to 419 million units, according to Gartner Group. The smartphone segment jumped 42.7 percent during the period, and now comprises 36.7 percent of total mobile phone sales, Gartner said. Slowing demand for the overall category is due to the challenging economy and users postponing upgrades in anticipation of high-profile product launches such as the iPhone 5, Gartner said. Chinese manufacturers are pushing 3G and preparing for major device launches in the second half that will propel the smartphone market further, while the feature phone market will continue to weaken, said analyst Anshul Gupta.