Rebecca Day

Reactions to Amazon’s latest shopping tack -- contactless payments via scanned palms -- ranged from wariness to zeal on Twitter Tuesday. Amazon One launched Tuesday in two Seattle-area Amazon Go stores. Amazon described the service as a “fast, convenient” way to use palms to pay, present a loyalty card, enter a stadium or "badge" into work.

Sports aside, legacy media companies are telling consumers "there is no reason to subscribe to multichannel television anymore,” LightShed Partners wrote investors Tuesday. Legacy media are shifting their most ambitious content to their own streaming platforms, away from linear TV, said analyst Richard Greenfield, and COVID-19 led to “a whole new level of pain for the legacy TV ecosystem.” With little fresh content on TV, consumer adoption of streaming video “hit warp speed.” Once consumer behavior shifts, it’s hard to shift it back, “especially when the ‘experience’ of streaming TV is so far superior to linear live TV," Greenfield said, citing on-demand programming, few to no ads and smart interfaces that learn consumers’ tastes and make viewing suggestions. The investment firm hiked its target price for Netflix stock to $630, citing “unprecedented industry scale” and a forecast of more than 300 million global subscribers by 2023. Netflix has the global scale to attract talent and create “blockbuster hits,” Greenfield said. If it’s able to hit 400 million subscribers by 2026, the company will “dictate the global zeitgeist across long form video content, including film.” Netflix stock closed Tuesday up less than a point at $493.48.

Amazon gave a nod to small businesses Monday, blogging in its widely anticipated Prime Day announcement (see 2009210057) it will offer Prime members a $10 credit to use during the two-day sales event, Oct. 13-14, if they spend $10 on items sold by select small businesses before then. The same offer applies at Amazon-owned Whole Foods, which emailed customers Monday saying they can earn a $10 credit for Prime Day by buying $10 worth of goods in stores through Oct. 12. A section on Amazon.com urging customers to support small retail businesses breaks out vendors by category.

In a product refresh for the fast-approaching holiday season, Roku added an entry-level sound bar, The Streambar ($129, Oct. 15), available for preorder Monday, keeping the larger 2019 Smart Sound Bar in the lineup at $179. Streambar can be controlled by voice through users’ Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant devices. Later this year, it's expected to add Apple AirPlay 2 and HomeKit capability, which will be available for select 4K Roku products, said the company. With HomeKit, users will be able to control their Roku TV, sound bar or player using the Home app and Siri, it said.

About 35% of consumers plan to shop earlier this holiday season, Piper Sandler emailed investors Thursday. Fifty-four percent plan to shop roughly the same as last year; 11% indicated later shopping plans. The survey was fielded Sept. 14-18 with 517 respondents. More than half of consumers are “very much” avoiding large/crowded stores in favor of smaller ones, said the survey, up from 49% in June, while 52% expect to shop online more than before COVID-19. Piper sees an accelerated shift to strong e-commerce and omnichannel retailers in coming years.

Ring security for the car, voice calling via Fire TV, beefed up Echo devices and cloud gaming headlined Amazon’s hardware announcements in a livestreamed event Thursday. Ring also announced a $249 indoor drone, with an autonomous camera “that will automatically fly to predetermined areas of the home.” The Ring Always Home Cam records only when in flight and is “loud enough so you hear when it’s in motion,” said Ring President Leila Rouhi.

Nevo Butler from Universal Electronics Inc., a smart home hub with built-in voice assistant, is due on the market in late Q4, said CEO Paul Arling at a Wednesday virtual investor conference. The company said last month a “leading telecommunication service provider” signed on to be the first customer for the platform that includes UEI’s QuickSet Cloud and Nevo.ai interoperability as a service (see 2002210018).

U.S. retailers cut orders for merchandise by 9% at the pandemic's height, said PingPong Payments Monday, while consumer spending rose 6% year on year in Q2. Demand outstrips supply, and shortages will get worse when the holiday retail season starts next month, said the payments facilitator. With Amazon Prime Day set for October (see 2009210057), merchants “have been left scrambling for goods” for Q4, said Kenny Tsang, PingPong managing director, saying retailers planned too conservatively at the height of spring lockdown when placing holiday orders. Those who wanted goods faced disrupted supply chains, Tsang noted. The sector should be focused on a global e-ecommerce strategy, he said. Cross-border online sales worldwide increased 21% since January, as consumers seek cheaper prices and a broader selection.

Amazon is taking the next step with its Sidewalk project first announced last fall and reimagined this month at Silicon Labs’ Works With IoT virtual developer conference (see 2009100025). Amazon Sidewalk is a communal network created by neighbors who share a small portion of Wi-Fi bandwidth to help their devices “work better at home and beyond the front door,” said Silicon Labs Monday.

Amazon Prime Day, which has come to span well more than 24 hours, is “coming,” said an Amazon placeholder Monday. The company didn’t give dates for the two-day event that’s informally seen this year as launching the 2020 holiday season. The company didn’t hold Prime Day in July in the typical slot as it looked to catch up from pandemic orders that drove overall Q2 e-commerce orders to record levels. On Amazon’s Q2 investor call, Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said (see 2007310023) Amazon delayed Prime Day due to fulfillment constraints created by strong COVID-19-related demand that began in March and “remained elevated” throughout Q2. Adobe reported, meanwhile, that overall U.S. e-commerce receipts exceeded $2 billion daily in May and June (see 2009140031), numbers typically achieved only during the holiday season. Three days topped $3 billion. John Copeland, Adobe vice president-marketing and customer insights, predicted last week that the holiday season "will likely get here even earlier this year.” He said 2020 “has been a difficult year, and consumers are looking forward to the comfort of the holiday season.”