Qualcomm Technologies’ “accelerator program,” formed in June with broad tech industry support to help small businesses convert to a post-pandemic “mobile-first work environment” (see 2006110040), picked 33 companies, each to receive $25,000 worth of connected devices and services to suit their individual needs, said the chipmaker Monday. Qualcomm got more than 375 applications to the program, and the 33 businesses it picked “span the healthcare, education, crisis response, arts, environmental services, and other industries,” it said. Most identified as women-, minority- or veteran-owned, it said.

It’s “hard to quantify” the “market chatter” about Chromebook shortages and their impact on sales, as unprecedented consumer demand for connectivity tools shows no signs of abating during the pandemic, emailed NPD Vice President-Technology Stephen Baker Friday. “The fact is that sales results at these levels have been going on for weeks and weeks,” said Baker. “There may be insufficient product available, and current volumes could be higher than what we are doing now with more inventory,” he said. Yet Chromebook unit sales continue through the roof, rising the first three weeks of August “more than 2x higher than they were last year,” and up more than 90% since April from the same 2019 period, he said. A Google spokesperson declined comment Sunday about Chromebook shortages. The COVID-19 pandemic is putting “significant pressure on the supply chain as schools nationwide place orders to try and support remote learning resulting in Chromebook backlogs,” Google told (login required) the International Trade Commission last month, opposing Nokia's petitioned ban on Lenovo Chromebooks. NPD is finding consumer laptop sales “a little more volatile” during the back-to-school buying frenzy compared with the start of lockdown mandates in March, Ben Arnold, executive director-industry analyst-consumer electronics, told an NPD webinar last week. “We’ve seen one or two weeks where sales are up 40 or 50% for notebook PCs, and a couple of weeks where sales have been slightly negative,” said Arnold. “What we’re seeing on that end is some struggle to get product.” Amid the “historic” consumer demand for connectivity tools, “it’s difficult to get PCs right now, for sure,” he said. About three-quarters of the 46 Chromebook models BestBuy.com advertised for sale when we checked Monday were sold out.

The smartwatch market will rise at an 11% compound annual growth rate through 2024 to $14.57 billion, said a Friday Technavio report. Year-over-year growth in 2020 is forecast at 4.49%. Some 54% of smartwatch sales growth through the forecast period will come from North America. A key driver will be technology advances in the semiconductor market, it said.

Bose is offering discounts to military personnel through its e-commerce site. Active-duty members are eligible, as are reservists, veterans, retirees, National Guard, surviving spouses and immediate family. Eligibility is confirmed by ID.me. Offers are good on products $199 and higher. Aviation products are excluded.

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis developed a way to make “smart bricks” to store electricity for powering electronics devices, blogged the school, citing an Aug. 11 Nature article. Researchers converted red bricks, bought at Home Depot for 65 cents each, into a supercapacitor. “We have developed a coating of the conducting polymer PEDOT [poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)],” comprising nanofibers that “penetrate the inner porous network of a brick; a polymer coating remains trapped in a brick and serves as an ion sponge that stores and conducts electricity,” said Julio D’Arcy, assistant chemistry professor. The red pigment in bricks -- iron oxide -- is essential for triggering the polymerization reaction, he said. The authors calculate that walls made of energy-storing bricks could bank a substantial amount of energy. “A brick wall serving as a supercapacitor can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times within an hour,” said D’Arcy. “If you connect a couple of bricks, microelectronics sensors would be easily powered.” A proof of concept in the Nature article shows a brick directly powering a green LED.

Zepp launched its E series wearables that monitor blood-oxygen saturation and sleep stages. The $249 watches support 11 sports modes and can operate underwater to 50 meters for 10 minutes, said the company Thursday. Battery life is up to one week. Zepp is taking preorders with availability set for Tuesday.

Nvidia’s gaming business finished Q2 “significantly ahead of our expectations,” said Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress on a Wednesday investor call. Revenue of $1.65 billion was up 26% year on year and a 24% increase sequentially from Q1, she said: “The upside is broad-based across geographic regions, products and channels.” Gaming’s growth amid COVID-19 “highlights the emergence of a leading form of entertainment worldwide,” said Kress. The number of daily gamers on Steam, an online gaming distributor, is up 25% from pre-pandemic levels, she said. NPD reported U.S. consumer spending on videogames grew 30% in Q2 to a record $11 billion, she said. “We ramped over 100 new models with our OEM partners focused on both premium and mainstream price points.” In Nvidia’s “mainstream” segment, “we brought the GeForce GTX to laptop price points as low as $699,” she said. The explosive growth in gaming demand isn't temporary, said CEO Jensen Huang. The pandemic made gaming “the largest entertainment medium in the world,” he said. Huang thinks “this way of enjoying entertainment digitally has been accelerated as a result of the pandemic,” and it’s not “going to return” to pre-COVID-19 levels, he said. COVID-19 office closures dealt a significant Q2 blow to Nvidia’s professional visualization business, said Kress. Revenue in the segment was down 30% from the 2019 quarter and off 34% sequentially from Q1, reflecting broad-based demand declines in mobile and desktop workstations, she said. Work-from-home initiatives drove enterprise demand for Nvidia “virtual and cloud-based graphic solutions,” and Q2 bookings in those segments jumped 60% from the 2019 quarter, she said. The pandemic will have a “lasting impact on how we work,” said Kress. Nvidia’s revenue mix going forward “will likely reflect this evolution in enterprise workforce trends, with a greater focus on technologies such as Nvidia laptops and virtual workstations that enable remote work and virtual collaboration,” she said. Vehicle factory closures sent Nvidia’s Q2 automotive revenue tumbling 47% from the 2019 quarter and down 28% sequentially from Q1, said Kress. Factory production volume got progressively better in the quarter “after bottoming in April,” she said. Mercedes-Benz, starting in 2024, will launch “software-defined intelligent vehicles” across its entire fleet using Nvidia’s “full technology stack,” said Kress.

LG is shipping a 27-inch UltraGear gaming monitor, a 4K in-plane-switching model with 1-millisecond gray to gray latency. The 27GN950 ($799), with Nvidia G-Sync compatibility and an AMD FreeSync Premium Pro processor, has a 144 Hz refresh rate, 10-bit color and VESA Display Stream Compression technology. It has RGB Sphere Lighting 2.0 to match with the sounds and visuals in the game, said LG.

Prime Day-esque deals on Amazon devices this week are part of the e-commerce giant’s Ready for School event, a spokesperson emailed. “We regularly offer customers new deals, including deals on Amazon Devices,” she said. Current deals are “unrelated to Prime Day,” which will be in Q4, she said.

Target shares reached a 52-week high Wednesday closing 12.7% higher at $154.22 after its strongest-ever quarter of same-store sales growth. Q2 comparable sales jumped 24.3% for the quarter ended Aug. 1. Stores fulfilled more than 90% of sales in the quarter, said CEO Brian Cornell. It had market share gains of $5 billion in the first half, with “unusually strong” gains across all five core categories. Cornell credited a differentiated merchandising assortment and convenient fulfillment options, on a Wednesday earnings call. Same-day services, including order pickup, drive up and Shipt, grew 273%, accounting for 6 points of comp sales growth. Store comps rose 10.9%, while digital comp sales surged 195%, comprising 13.4 points of total comp sales growth. Drive-up fulfillment grew fastest at 734%. To meet demand, Target is adding extra drive-up slots sooner than expected, from two to 12 additional parking lot spots, depending on stores’ needs, said Chief Operating Officer John Mulligan. Electronics sales shot up 70% due to increased shopping in office equipment, home electronics and gaming, said Cornell. Despite solid Q2 performance, Target is being cautious and “flexible” about back-to-school (BTS) and holiday season plans, he said. It announced plans to close on Thanksgiving for social distancing and safety, and to begin holiday promotions in October, he said. Target is extending BTS because 60% of students are learning remotely, and it’s not clear whether they will return to classrooms this fall or in January, Cornell said. At some point those students will need school supplies, he said, “so we’ve made the decision to be flexible." Despite strong Q2 results, volatility continues to be “elevated,” said Chief Financial Officer Michael Fiddelke. May was “by far the strongest month” with 33% comp growth, followed by June at 21%, and July at about 20%, he said. August month-to-date comp sales have been running in the low double digits, strong historically but an “incredibly wide swing within a few months,” he said. That’s an indicator of how difficult it is to forecast in the current climate, said Fiddelke: “Given that our Q1 performance was not a good predictor of our second quarter results, our Q2 results should not be viewed as a predictor of our performance going forward.” He didn’t provide Q3 or full-year guidance. Target paused new store openings in March but resumed construction, with plans to open 27 more stores this year. Nine are scheduled to open this month, 16-18 in October, said Mulligan.