Rebecca Day

Amazon delivered two-thirds of its U.S. parcels in July, 274 million items, topping FedEx, said ABI analyst Susan Beardslee on a Wednesday webinar. Total retail revenue this year is forecast at $5.3 trillion, slipping 1.99%, with $70 billion from e-commerce, $4.2 trillion from brick-and-mortar stores. E-commerce is more than 14% of U.S. retail sales, she said. ABI pegs Amazon 2020 e-commerce sales at $310 billion, followed by Walmart at $41 billion. Beardslee noted Walmart started a Prime competitor this year. The top 10 retailers generate an estimated 63% of all U.S. digital sales. A growing concern for e-commerce companies is lack of qualified commercial truck drivers as the market recovers from COVID-19. More than 88,000 drivers were furloughed in April and either found other employment or retired, said the analyst. She cited a high incidence of noncompliant drivers found in the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse database, who hadn’t started a return to duty process as of August. The combination is resulting in driver shortages approaching 2018 levels, she said. That’s expected to “impact the cost to shippers,” as shippers incur costs to acquire and maintain talent; that cost is likely to be passed on to consumers, she said. Eighty percent of shoppers expect to use the buy online, pick up in store fulfillment option this season; 50% of retailers plan to offer it, she said.

Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell reinforced the staying power of videoconferencing hardware, mice and keyboards on a Tuesday call, as the company faces stiff comparable year-on-year sales trends after two strong quarters driven by work-from-home trends. “The biggest permanent changes were going to happen anyway,” he said, citing home-based work and education, “video everywhere,” esports and “democratization of content creation.”

Details of Walmart’s first tranche of Black Friday deals, slated for Nov. 4, emerged Monday as deals sites previewed pages filled with electronics, kitchen items and the requisite TVs. More than a month ahead of the traditional Black Friday, Nov. 27 this year, the protracted sales marathon is billed as “Black Friday Deals for Days.”

“It's too soon to answer this with any degree of accuracy,” emailed Sound United CEO Kevin Duffy Friday in response to our questions on how the distribution of Bowers & Wilkins premium speakers will change after the company’s purchase by Sound United (see 2010090057). It’s also too early to know whether Sound United will use a separate sales force for the high-end speaker line vs. the team that handles the rest of the Sound United portfolio, Duffy said. On whether B&W’s engineering and manufacturing operations will remain in Worthing, England, he said, “At this juncture we have no intention of shifting B&W manufacturing.” Sound United’s Oct. 9 announcement of its purchase of the esteemed loudspeaker brand suggested Sound United was exploring developing new B&W products to "support the brand’s position in the premium acoustic home audio market.” Duffy told us Friday its aim is “to give B&W the tools and support they need to continue the amazing work they do, developing the best loudspeakers in the world.” Sound United will be “working to best position products across each brands' portfolio to maximize value for each unique company.” Other Sound United speaker brands include Boston Acoustics, Definitive Technology and Polk. B&W is the premier global speaker brand for Sound United and price segments "currently unoccupied by other Sound United brands' products.” Sound United, which also owns the Denon, Heos, Marantz and Classe Audio brands, employs 1,600 with the B&W buy; it didn’t answer whether any B&W employees lost jobs after the sale, or from which departments. Geoff Edwards “will ensure continuity” by becoming the president of the Bowers & Wilkins brand within the Sound United portfolio, Duffy said.

Chinese TV maker Skyworth is looking to gain a foothold in the North American TV market as a “strong tier 2 brand” in early 2021 with branded OLED and QLED TVs, Senior Vice President-Sales and Marketing John Homlish told Consumer Electronics Daily Friday. The Shenzhen-based company, fifth largest TV maker in the world, has been selling Skyworth LCD TVs in the U.S. on Amazon, via select NATM retailers and on TV shopping networks this year in a run-up to its launch of U.S.-targeted higher end product next year. The company is an OEM supplier to two of the largest TV brands in the U.S. market, Homlish said, declining to name the brands due to nondisclosure agreements.

The pandemic accelerated the decline of pay TV by 18 months or more, said Interpret Vice President Brett Sappington on a Brightcove webinar. “Pay TV was already struggling with losses,” Sappington said, when production shutdowns due to the coronavirus cut into 2020 schedules for scripted television series. Job losses also cut into consumers' discretionary spending, he noted.

Amazon’s disclosure Thursday that Prime Day third-party sales grew 60% year on year could signal a “busy holiday season,” Cowen's John Blackledge wrote investors. Amazon said small- and medium-sized businesses raked in $3.5 billion in sales over the 48-hour Prime Day event, which Blackledge called a “robust start” to the holiday sales season, with an estimated total Prime Day gross merchandise value of $6.6 billion. It’s a “positive note for what is likely to be an unusually long 4Q / holiday shopping season, as consumers order earlier to ensure delivery in time for key holiday dates," said the analyst. Robust growth indicates Amazon overcame any supply chain hurdles “as they manage an unprecedented 4Q with Prime Day so close to the post-Thanksgiving Cyber Monday events.” Consumer appetite appears to be "strong," underscoring Cowen’s belief that the pandemic is driving a “meaningful and sustained increase in consumers’ online purchasing habits.” Amazon highlighted top-selling tech items as Bose QuietComfort 35 Series II headphones, discounted 43% to $199 (see 2010130022), the Fitbit Versa 2 smartwatch, Fire TV Edition smart TVs from Toshiba and Insignia, Roomba’s iRobot vacuum and a MyQ smart wireless garage door opener. Among its own products, the $19 Echo Dot was the most popular item purchased globally, it said. "Tens of millions" of customers supported small businesses in the two-week lead-up to Prime Day, generating more than $900 million in sales for small businesses included in Amazon's "Spend $10, Get $10" promotion, said the e-tailer.

Apple’s iPhone 12 launch likely isn't the beginning of a “supercycle” for 5G, which is “still far away from real relevance,” MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett wrote investors Wednesday. Any bump in iPhone sales will likely be due to pent-up demand for upgrades and replacements in the lengthening handset replacement cycle, but that will “burn off fairly quickly,” said the analyst: “New and better cameras are great, but the real 5G cycle is at least a year or two away.” Verizon is the “big winner” of Apple’s decision to go all-in on millimeter-wave for its quartet of 5G iPhone 12 models, launched Tuesday (see 2010130043), said Moffett. Apple supports both of Verizon’s main millimeter-wave bands, 28 GHz and 39 GHz, he noted. The surprise cameo from Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg at the virtual launch event could mean Apple sees millimeter-wave as a “differentiator,” said the analyst. “But Apple’s support for mmWave may reflect the uncomfortable reality that 5G in any spectrum band other than mmWave is basically just LTE with a new name,” Moffett said. T-Mobile and AT&T already offer nationwide 5G in low frequencies to attain coverage, “but the small block widths for the spectrum mean that the user experience is not really any better than 4G." AT&T’s iPhone trade-in offer -- a free 5G iPhone for trade-in of an iPhone 8 or later, is a “preemptive race to the bottom,” he said, saying that what he sees as a net subsidy above $600 “strikes us as rather steep.” Verizon’s trade-in deal -- the $799 iPhone 12 for $15 per month and the $699 iPhone 12 mini for $12 per month with trade-in and 24-month contract -- “seems positively pedestrian by comparison.” The iPhone 12 rollout will accelerate a new round of 5G “map wars” as carriers try to “maximize perception for the breadth and depth of the new technology platform,” Citi's Michael Rollins wrote investors Wednesday: The “switcher pool and churn” will pick up in Q4, favoring “insurgents over incumbents.”

ComScore analysts avoided making e-commerce holiday projections on a Wednesday webinar, citing "too many unknowns," including the unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer spending. The research firm said it was encouraged with 17% year-on-year digital commerce growth in July and August, vs. 8% growth in Q2. It expects continued online shopping growth across mobile and desktop shopping platforms during the holidays.

Black Friday is taking on a new look at Walmart, beginning the first week of November in a “Black Friday Deals for Days” omnichannel event, it said Wednesday, the second day of Amazon’s Prime Day two-day sales fest. Walmart promised “increased availability of event items" and a monitored in-store experience.