Consumers who visit Circuit City stores Nov. 26-Dec. 31 can videotape 30-sec. holiday greetings and expressions of support to troops stationed overseas in “Message from America” promotion announced Tues. by Sonic Solutions. Messages from general public will be sent to USO and Armed Forces Network for distribution to military personnel and will be edited by CBS for public service announcements to be aired during prime time, sports and other programming. Moreover, family members of military personnel on active duty will have option of recording personal messages up to 5 min. long for transfer onto DVD using Sonic Solutions software. Discs can by mailed directly to troops in field. Besides CBS, Circuit City and Sonic Solutions, “coalition” of 20 corporate supporters includes Sony Electronics.
“Black Fri.” blowouts will come day earlier this year when Kmart kicks off Thanksgiving sale 7 a.m. Thurs. with DVD player at $69.98 and stereo TV at $79.86. Meanwhile, question going into holiday weekend was how low Wal-Mart would go on DVD in 5- hour sale Fri.
Hughes Electronics would become largest single shareholder of XM Satellite Radio after Motient Corp. transfers its remaining stake in XM Class B common shares to senior secure debt guarantors, led by Hughes. Exchange will eliminate all remaining shares of XM Class B common and transfer those shares as Class A stock to Hughes and other guarantors.
Palm and Handspring shares surged in latest round of speculation that either or both handheld PC makers might be bought. Handspring shares rose 42% to $5.68 and Palm 12% to $3.87. Earlier, Wall St. Journal reported on investor hope that companies could merge. Latest speculation was touched off by departure earlier this month of Palm CEO Carl Yankowski. Handspring spokeswoman denied Palm-Handspring merger was being discussed, while Palm officials weren’t available for comment. Year ago, Palm was reported to be target of Dell Computer and Gateway. Meanwhile, Handspring filed shelf registration with SEC for offering of up to $60 million in securities. Registration will allow Handspring to issue various types of securities including preferred stock, common stock, warrants. Palm also has cut more than dozen jobs related to software project in Cambridge, Mass., CNET News.com reported. Cambridge was site of Anyday.com, online calendar company Palm acquired in cash and stock deal valued at $80 million when it was announced in May 2000. Palm has largely folded that company into its MyPalm portal. Palm laid off 500 employees in 2 rounds of cuts earlier this year.
Hewlett-Packard was leader in desktop PC market share with 36.5% in Sept., NPD Intelect said. Compaq followed with 31.6%, then IBM (9.8%), eMachines (8%) and Sony (5.9%). Figures are for retail sellthrough. In portable PCs, IBM led with 25.1% share over Compaq’s 19.9%. Toshiba was close runner-up at 19.6%. Hewlett-Packard and Sony rounded field with 15.7% and 9.7%, respectively.
Apple’s iPod may soon be able to work with Windows operating systems (OS). While digital audio player has been compatible with Apple’s Macintosh PCs since debut in Oct., Mediafour has designed software to enable it to link to PCs running Windows OS. Mediafour said it was working on XPod, but didn’t announce launch date. XPod will allow users with Windows PC and FireWire port to connect to iPod. However, many Windows machines, unlike Macintosh PCs, don’t come with FireWire as built-in feature and add-on FireWire cards are priced around $100.
Panasonic will donate $2.1 million to disaster fund for children of N.J. families who suffered direct loss from Sept. 11 terrorist attack. Fund, now at $2.5 million, was established by N.J. Chamber of Commerce and also received contributions from other local employers.
Boombox with MiniDisc recorder, MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) playback was unveiled for Japan market by Kenwood. Rampage MDX-J5WM ($289) also has cassette, radio and CD that can play CD- R/RW discs. Portable is among first that supports WMA as well as MP3 music compression format.
Consumer Electronics Daily observes Thanksgiving holiday Thurs., Nov. 22. Next issue will appear Fri., Nov. 23.
Hastings Entertainment narrowed 3rd quarter loss to $5.52 million (-46? per share) from $12.03 million (-$1.03)as revenue rose 3.1% to $103.2 million from $100.08 million. Company said book sales were hurt by retail fallout from Sept. 11 attacks, but video for sale and rental and videogames performed better than expected.