Walmart U.S. e-commerce sales grew 37% in the quarter ended April 30 from the year-ago period, more than doubling over two years. At Sam’s Club, it gained 47% on curbside pickup, said Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs. Walmart is focused on serving customers better by “diversifying the model,” said CEO Doug McMillon on a quarterly call Tuesday. He cited investments in pickup and delivery, Walmart+ memberships and other factors. Consumer electronics is one of the “pockets where we continue to chase demand,” said CEO Doug McMillon. “We’re monitoring things like delays into ports and other factors in the supply chain.”

Vizio didn’t take itself public for customary reasons of raising money, but to get the “story” out about plans to “get to the next level” in streaming, Chief Financial Officer Adam Townsend told a Needham virtual conference Monday. There's “a nice balance sheet, ample cash, no debt, cash-flow-positive,” he said. It spent the past several years “really investing in a software platform to bring a proprietary operating system to the market” to exploit “the future of consumer video consumption,” he said of SmartCast OS. The streaming opportunity is “getting well defined, and really, really large,” he said. Vizio is “now at scale” with 13.5 million monthly active SmartCast users, he said. “We’re really expanding the offering to consumers in total.” Vizio will add “a lot more” content later this year, he said: “Some pretty big household brand names are coming to the platform pretty soon.”

Semiconductor supply constraints will “persist longer than anticipated, intensifying and likely extending the current cyclical upturn into next year,” reported Fitch Ratings Thursday: Industry previously expected this to “dissipate” in 2021's second half. Recent setbacks, including Texas storms in February and Taiwan’s prolonged drought, “exacerbated” supply constraints, said Fitch.

After agreeing to pay $20 million to settle an FTC complaint it misused credit reports to help unqualified customers obtain financing, Vivint is “pleased to put this matter behind us,” said CEO Todd Pedersen on a Q1 call Thursday: It strengthened compliance policies and will continue to make it a priority. Sales staff stole personal information to approve others for loans, said Daniel Kaufman, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection acting director. Vivint uses door-to-door sales representatives working on a commission-only basis to sell home security devices and monitoring, said last month's complaint. Vivint added 60,127 subscribers in Q1, a 20% year-on-year increase, and revenue grew 13% to $343.3 million. It had over 1.7 million subscribers, up 10%, said Pedersen. The attrition rate was the lowest in the last nine quarters, he said. The stock closed 20% higher Friday at $14.01. The company maintained its 2021 outlook despite logistics challenges in the supply chain and hiring constraints, said Chief Financial Officer Dale Gerard. The provider is in “good shape” with cameras but higher adoption rates than expected -- or a disruption in chip manufacturing or getting cameras from ports -- could limit Q3 and Q4 selling, Gerard said: It’s also challenged by finding enough installers and service professionals.

MediaTek’s new Dimensity 900 5G chipset supports Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, 4K video with HDR10+ and a 108-megapixel main camera, said the chipmaker Thursday: The 6-nanometer Dimensity 900, targeted for “high-tier” 5G-enabled smartphones, is embedded with an “HDR-native” image signal processor and a “hardware-accelerated” 4K HDR video recording engine that supports up to four “concurrent cameras.” MediaTek expects the Bluetooth 5.2-compatible chipset will be deployed in 5G smartphones reaching the market starting in 2021's second half.

The global chips shortage will persist through 2021, and likely won’t recover to “normal levels” until Q2 2022, reported Gartner Wednesday. The shortage will continue to “constrain” production of many “electronic equipment types,” said analyst Kanishka Chauhan. “Foundries are increasing wafer prices, and in turn, chip companies are increasing device prices.” The shortage started mainly with power management devices, display drivers and microcontrollers and extended to substrates, wire bonding, passives, materials and testing, said Gartner.

Vizio Q1 revenue increased 52% year on year to $505.7 million. Q1 had $453.5 million from device sales (up 47%) and $52.2 million (up 120%) from Platform+, the segment incorporating SmartCast advertising monetization and Inscape automatic content recognition. Vizio shipped 1.5 million smart TVs, up 28% . SmartCast active accounts increased 57% to 13.4 million. Vizio viewing hours gained 42% to 6.95 billion. Profit declined 64% to $3.3 million. “We are very pleased with the results we generated in our first quarter as a public company,” said Chief Financial Officer Adam Townsend. “We continue to benefit from the rapid adoption of streaming and our expanding presence" in ads. Time spent on linear TV declined to 34% from 41%, “highlighting the continued consumer shift toward streaming,” the CFO said. The stock fell 6.6% to $25.60 at 5:48 p.m. EDT.

Of the 42% of U.S. broadband household that don’t own or plan to buy a smart home device, 17% say they would likely buy a cheaper one, reported Parks Associates Monday. "Price is a major barrier to smart home adoption, especially among younger heads of household," said analyst Patrice Samuels. More than 50% of broadband customers who don’t own or intend to purchase a smart home device say they don’t see benefits. "Familiarity with devices is increasing, but value perception is not,” she said.

Demand for Microchip Technology products is outpacing “capacity improvements we were able to implement, resulting in lead times continuing to extend out,” CEO Ganesh Moorthy on a fiscal Q4 Thursday call for the quarter ended March 31. “In my 40 years in the semiconductor industry, I cannot recall a time where the imbalance between the supply and demand has been more acute.” Others say similar (see 2105060050).

IBM developed the world's first 2-nanometer semiconductor “breakthrough” technology, promising 45% higher performance and 75% lower energy consumption the 7-nm-node solutions, said the company Thursday. Quadrupling smartphone battery life and “drastically” speeding up laptop functionality are among “possible benefits,” said IBM. "We expect that the earliest devices based on this 2-nm technology could enter the market around 2024," said a spokesperson. "This timeline depends on a manufacturer’s road map." The 2-nm node is "a foundational advanced logic technology," which IBM Research built in its semiconductor lab in Albany, New York, she said. "We jointly developed the 2-nm technology with partners in our semiconductor innovation ecosystem. We'll work with our ecosystem partners for manufacturing options." Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., for context, is the world’s largest foundry, and is in the second year of volume production of 5-nm-node wafers. It expects to achieve 3-nm-node production at scale in 2022's second half, said top executives last month. TSMC hasn’t publicly discussed a 2-nm-node road map. TSMC representatives couldn't be reached by our deadline.