Micron Technology’s DRAM business is in a “severe shortage,” but its NAND market “is showing signs of stabilization,” said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on a Wednesday call for fiscal Q2, ended March 4. Smartphone unit sales “are expected to show robust growth,” said Mehrotra. Micron expects “to benefit from higher content in 5G phones, which are forecast to double in calendar 2021 to more than 500 million units,” he said. Fiscal Q2 revenue in Micron’s mobile business unit was $1.8 billion, 44% higher than in the year-earlier quarter, said Chief Financial Officer Dave Zinsner. “Mobile demand remains strong as 5G momentum increases and the mobile market continues to recover from the impact of the pandemic.” Total Q2 revenue of $6.24 billion gained 30%. The PC business benefits "from the remote work and learning trend that drove healthy notebook and Chromebook demand” in fiscal Q2, said Mehrotra. COVID-19 drove “changes in our economy that we believe will not only benefit us this year, but also serve to accelerate the digital transformation of the economy and drive new opportunities for Micron,” he said. “Recovery from the pandemic and pent-up demand are expected to drive strong demand growth in markets such as enterprise, cloud, desktop PCs, mobile, auto and industrial.”

Apple is going virtual again with its Worldwide Developers Conference, scheduled for June 7-11, it said Tuesday. WWDC, traditionally at Apple's Cupertino, California, headquarters, was virtual for the first time in 2020 due to COVID-19.

Akamai is using a Salesforce platform to help organizations scale online COVID-19 vaccine registration, it said Tuesday. This tool helps power “fast page load times regardless of the number of users registering simultaneously,” it said. “When loads are too high, Vaccine Edge passes users to a waiting room to keep the site available so that the user can maintain their location in the queue.”

Peak demand for LifeMD’s telemedicine services drove 2020 revenue 200% higher than in 2019, said CEO Justin Schreiber on a Q4 earnings call Monday. “December 2020 alone eclipsed the entire fourth quarter of 2019,” he said. “Despite the challenges and heartbreaks, perhaps one silver lining to the pandemic is how it catalyzed the rapid expansion and evolution of the telehealth industry.” LifeMD is on pace to finish Q1 with nearly 300% revenue growth compared with the 2020 quarter, said Schreiber. “We believe we've only begun to scratch the surface of what we see as a $600 billion and growing addressable market opportunity.” Shares closed 15.3% lower Tuesday at $15.98 from reports the stock was significantly overvalued.

Gaming PCs and monitors were “among the greatest beneficiaries” of the pandemic, reported IDC Monday. As consumers “spent more hours at home and fewer dollars outside,” 2020 shipments of gaming PCs and monitors grew 26.8% year over year to 55 million units, the biggest since IDC began tracking the category five years ago: “Gaming notebooks remained the biggest volume driver.” They grew a record 26.9%, “despite being affected by display panel shortages,” it said. Gaming monitors “reached new heights,” growing more than 77%, it said. “IDC expects the gaming market to remain a bright spot after the overall PC market returns to more normal replacement cycles after the pandemic. While gaming desktops will continue to fade in favor of notebooks, their demise will be more than made up for by notebooks and monitors.”

Many employees who “have acclimated to remote work are not in a rush to go back to an office full-time,” Verizon reported Thursday. Of the 3,000 U.S. adults canvassed online March 14-16 in a Verizon-sponsored Morning Consult poll, half would consider changing jobs to continue remote or hybrid work; 54% work remotely at least part time, vs. 28% pre-pandemic. Nearly seven in 10 prefer to continue in a year working remotely at least one to two days a week. A quarter hope to return to a physical office full time by a year from now. Nearly a third say they upgraded or considered upgrading their home internet bandwidth and their mobile data plans within the past year. Two-thirds spend at least three hours weekly watching live TV. Nearly six in 10 say the same about watching content through a streaming service. Forty-seven percent subscribed to a new streaming service during the pandemic, and 70% say they have binge-watched a show.

An estimated 40% of consumers increased use of smartphone speakerphones during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cirrus Logic found. The chipmaker hired SAR Insight & Consulting to canvass 1,722 consumers in China, Germany, South Korea, the U.K. and the U.S. Younger respondents especially rely "more on a variety of smartphone applications that require better audio, indicative of behavior that we expect to continue beyond the pandemic,” said SAR analyst Peter Cooney.

ATSC's annual NextGen Broadcast Conference is to return as a physical event Aug. 25-26 in Washington after going all-virtual in 2020. A spokesperson said Wednesday that ATSC will continue monitoring conditions on the ground in determining whether plans to hold the physical conference that way. Many other groups we surveyed plan in-person events later this year; see our report here.

With the shift to online shopping and banking “here to stay,” more than three-quarters of U.S. consumers find their online consumer experience (CX) interactions “better than pre-pandemic, though brands often lack empathy,” reported Telus International Tuesday. The CX company hired Pollfish to canvass 1,500 working Americans this quarter, finding that 97% plan to continue shopping online in a “post-pandemic world,” it said. The proportions were somewhat lower for those who would continue online banking (92%), health and wellness activities (77%) and gaming (71%) “because of their positive digital experiences in 2020,” said Telus.

More than half of the “COVID-19 generation of remote workers” admitted using company devices for personal reasons, increasing their employers’ cybersecurity risk, reported AT&T Tuesday. It hired Opinium Research to poll 3,500 remote workers in the U.K. and Germany, finding that more than a third use work equipment to connect to smart home devices such as voice assistants, smart speakers, fitness monitors, smart lighting and smart kitchen appliances. Workers “understand the problem,” it said. Two-thirds were more aware of cybersecurity threats since shifting to working from home, and nearly half believe they and their companies are at increased risk of cyberattacks. About three in 10 say their companies weren’t doing enough to protect them from cyberattacks.