Rebecca Day

With profitability in the video category hhgregg’s “biggest challenge,” it’s looking to higher margin categories such as 60-inch-and-larger TVs, appliances, furniture, fitness and mattresses -- along with the delivery and installation opportunities that go with them -- to help boost the bottom line, said CEO Dennis May on the company’s Q1 earnings call Thursday.

Back when they were $25,000 and even $10,000 a pop, plasma TVs were a status symbol of the upper class. Now, plummeting prices and Black Friday sales have put $199 42-inch TVs at the forefront of a political debate on income equality. A report in CNNMoney Tuesday, “Are You Poor If You Have a Flat-Screen TV?” cites figures from a “Residential Energy Consumption Survey” taken in 2009 by the Department of Energy, which showed that even before the price of flat-panel TVs tumbled to new lows late last year, many low-income Americans owned multiple TVs along with middle- and upper-class consumers.

Cumulative U.S. viewership for London Olympics coverage in 3D is “about a million” households, Eisuke Tsuyuzaki, Panasonic North America chief technology officer, told Consumer Electronics Daily Tuesday at a screening of 3D Olympics coverage in New York. “That’s quite respectable for where we are today,” he said, citing 3D TV’s three years on the market.

Following its announcement Monday that it had put in place a management team for the Redbox Instant by Verizon brand that’s set to launch this fall, parent company Coinstar said on the company’s Q2 earnings call late Thursday that Redbox’s market share for video disc rentals grew 8 percentage points in Q2 to 42.5 percent. Redbox now leads its “online-by-mail competitor,” Netflix, by more than 15 percentage points, said CEO Paul Davis. Netflix’s disc sales, meanwhile, have been dropping as the company has put more emphasis on streaming sales. On its April earnings call, Netflix said its number of DVD subscriptions had dropped by 1.08 million to 9.96 million, and CEO Reed Hastings said Netflix expected the number of DVD subscribers to decline “steadily every quarter forever” (CED April 25 p4).

Barnes & Noble’s Nook hit the bargain bin Friday, landing on Internet bargain website Living Social’s nationwide deals page at a 15 percent discount. The 8GB Nook, advertised along with offers for Fanatics sports merchandise, a 1-year subscription to “Zoobooks” and a 5-week Virtual Nerd online math boot camp, was cut $30 from $199 in a 2-day deal. By mid-afternoon, 1,733 had been sold, a tracker on the webpage said. According to the “fine print,” all sales are final and the purchased Nooks are not eligible for return. Barnes & Noble was also hawking the 16GB version of the Nook on its own website, shoving a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card to shoppers who bought a $249 Nook by Sunday. Meanwhile, the competing Google Nexus 7 tablet, promised by Staples to be in stores by the end of the month (CED July 10 p5), seemed hard to come by in an Internet search Friday. Staples listed both the Nexus 7 for $199 (8GB) and $249 (16GB) on the website, but noted the devices were “in store only on special order.” Google’s own Play website said the Asus-built devices are “coming soon.” Interested shoppers were directed to add their names to a list for upcoming emails about availability. B&HPhoto.com, which began taking orders for the 16GB Nexus 7 earlier this month, said the device was backordered until Sept. 1.

ST. LOUIS -- Azione Unlimited’s goal of 150 dealers by year-end, toward an overall max of 250 dealers, was “a little ambitious,” President Richard Glikes told us at the group’s kickoff conference Wednesday. The group stands at 46 now and will end the year at 100-110, Glikes said, conceding he’s had to work harder than expected to nail down dealer members. “I had this idea that dealers knew who I was and they would just come along, and that’s not the case,” said the 15-year veteran of the Home Technology Specialists of America buying group. “But when you get there face-to-face and they see the value proposition and the vendor lineup, it’s a relatively easy process” to sign up dealers, he said.

ST. LOUIS -- Azione Unlimited, founded by ex-HTSA Executive Director Richard Glikes, launched its first member meeting with some 70 dealer and vendor attendees of roughly equal parts. Top priority of the fledgling buying group -- which is in search of a description “other than buying group” -- is to “deliver more profits to members,” Glikes said. Membership goals include a maximum dealer base of 250 and a “limited” vendor roster of 32, Glikes said, with the current number of vendor companies at 24, he said. An original plan to include manufacturer reps as part of the group was scrapped, Glikes said, when members pushed back, citing reps’ multiple loyalties to different vendors.

Despite a downturn in consumer tech spending sentiment for July, the CE industry will see stronger than anticipated growth in 2012 exceeding $200 billion in sales for the first time, according to CEA’s semi-annual industry forecast released Tuesday. The CE industry will grow an estimated 5.9 percent in 2012, CEA said, two points higher than January projections, and sales are expected to surpass $206 billion for the year. Growth is expected to continue into 2013, at 4.5 percent, to reach $215.8 billion, CEA said.

Heavy promo days in CE retailing continued this week as mass merchants and specialty dealers hope to squeeze out sales from a dry summer in which retail sales fell in June for the third consecutive month, according to Commerce Department figures. Specialty dealers Bjorn’s in San Antonio and The Sound Room in Chesterfield, Mo., are using coverage of the London Olympics, which open Friday, to draw customers into stores, while Target continued efforts to infuse a November buying mood into a parched July, tacking Cyber Monday sales this week onto Black Friday sales that ran the week before.

"An inflection point is occurring in retail,” driven by mobile technology that’s “revolutionizing” how people shop and pay, said John Donahoe, eBay CEO, on the company’s earnings call late Wednesday. The company expects eBay and PayPal Mobile to each handle more than $10 billion in transactions this year, which Donahoe called “a stunning surge in purchases and payments on devices that did not even exist just a few short years ago.” PayPal Mobile transactions were up 150 percent in Q2 over last year, he said, noting that last quarter four major U.K. retailers added an in-store PayPal app and Starbucks added PayPal to its Android app.