In 2017 Foxconn (2354.TT) announced that it was thinking about coming to Wisconsin, and, as all good politicians do, local bureaucrats quickly cobbled together a $2.85b tax credit plan to help convince Foxconn to choose their site in the tiny (27,732 in 2020) village of Mt. Pleasant for the $10b Gen 10 LCD fab that Foxconn was going to build, along with ‘thousands of jobs to the state’ as per the company.  The deal, which had tax incentives that were 10 times larger than any deal ever made in Wisconsin with a foreign entity was approved by Foxconn in 2018.  Houses were purchased under the threat of eminent domain and razed, and then President Trump, along with Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn and the governor of Wisconsin, broke ground at the 1,200-acre site on a sunny day in June, promising at least 13,000 jobs.

However, as has been the case with a number of Foxconn projects, things got off to a slow start, although local government spending on roads and infrastructure continued, and Foxconn did not meet qualifications for subsidies in 2018, falling short of the target of 260 hires for the year by 104.  Foxconn decided to change its plans in early 2019, then promising a Gen 6 LCD fab, due to ‘market conditions’ and by 2021, with little project development, a new administration signed a ‘modified’ agreement with Foxconn that reduced the number of jobs created by the project from 13,000 (“…probably 50,00 or more…” – Donald J. Trump) to 1,454, reduced the tax credits to $80m (paid by taxpayers) if conditions were met, and lowered Foxconn’s capital commitment from $10b to $672m (by 2026), while giving Foxconn the option to produce items other than LCD displays at the site.
Over the years since the original plan was formulated a number of buildings have been erected on the site (Figure 2); a guardhouse, a 120k ft2 storage facility, a 1m ft2 factory, and a dome.  During the pandemic the manufacturing center was used to produce respirators, face masks, and coffee kiosks, and more recently servers.  No displays were ever built on the site, but Foxconn began leasing about 1/3 of the site to Microsoft (MSFT) for $50m in 2023.  Microsoft is building a $1b data center on the site that is thought to eventually employ between 300 and 400 people.  Phase 1 of the Microsoft project must begin by July 2026 and phase 2 by July 2033 to qualify for tax breaks. 
All in, promises were made by Foxconn, the Governor of Wisconsin, and President Trump that the Foxconn project would be “…the Eighth Wonder of the World”, bringing jobs and prosperity to the region.  In this case taxpayers footed much of the bill for infrastructure, but few realize that the person who introduced the Chairman of Foxconn to President Trump which began this sad tale, was none other than Masayoshi Son, the Chairman of Softbank (9984.JP),  who is the financial spearhead of the just announced ‘Stargate Project’ that promises to spend $500b over the next  4 years to build power efficient Ai data centers across the US. 
While we expect at least the initial $100b funding that the partners in the project are promising will be privately funded, with little taxpayer involvement other than infrastructure and lost tax revenue (We note that the taxpayers footed the bill for the Foxconn site to the tune of $426m by 2023 and an additional $257m for high-voltage power lines through electricity rate increases), but actual funding details have yet to be worked out.  Hopefully, taxpayers are not going to be required to be involved in this massive project, as its long-term benefits will likely accrue to the partners, but more important are the timelines and how the project is going to provide itself with power without tapping into the national grid or further destroying the environment with fossil fuel power plants.  Once the politicians and plutocrats move on to the next headline, it will be interesting to see whether Project Stargate becomes another ‘Foxconn Wisconsin’ or actually does anything other than making its wealthy partners more wealthy. 

2024 was not a good year for CE companies that are required to ship product by container, with conflicts in the Red Sea and strike threats on the East and Gulf coasts pushing up rates throughout most of the year.  In fact the Global Container Freight Index rose 96.9% during 2024, while the Asia to US East Coast index rose 86.4%.  The global index finished the year down 31.5% from its high but up 85.6% from its low, while the China/East index closed down 40.4% from its high and up 89.5% from its low. 
The good news is that the ILA strike that was scheduled for January 15, which would have shut down ports on both the East coast and the Gulf coast, did not happen, as a last-minute agreement between the ILA and the USMX was reached.  The rank-and-file vote still has to occur, but if ratified it will settle the dispute with a 6-year contract that seems to have satisfied both sides.  As the wage issue had already been settled, the only issue remaining was worker job protection from the automation that the USMX wants to bring in to modernize the ports, which was settled.
With the potential strike settlement and a less frenetic Red Sea situation, one might have expected rates to decline, however Chinese New Year (1/29) comes early this year and demand for containers has increased as the holiday approaches.  In the first two weeks of 2025 the Global index rose 12.7%, while the China/West Coast index rose 22.8%, a bit more of a burden for CE company margins.  To put those numbers in perspective, the 2025 Global index is up 64.1% on a y/y basis, while the 2025 China index is up128.9% y/y.  Not an auspicious start to the year but at least the strike threat is out of the way.

There are many sources of shipment information for smartphones, PCs, tablets, and other CE devices, but data on TV set shipments is lacking.  Obviously, the data on a brand basis is confidential, but conversations with brands can sometimes pull in nuance that helps to make TV set estimates and forecasting a bit less seat-of-the-pants.  On a general basis TV set shipment data is less accurate than other major CE categories and estimates made by large data collectors is usually well protected from the public eye unless you are a subscriber.  We do see research reports on TV set shipments and sales from a variety of companies that specialize in writing industry specific reports, but they tend to be formulaic and offer little insight or detail into how their data was derived or what it means.
Without being able to subscribe to every service that provides TV set shipment data, we have always collected snippets of information that are part of press releases,  quarterly calls, Ks & Qs, and conversations with suppliers, along with the hard data that is occasionally allowed out into the world of non-paying users.  In particular, we try to collect enough hard quarterly data to compile what we call an ‘aggregated’ estimate for TV set shipments, based on no less than 3 sources (usually more), from which we can derive an average and a deviation to both reduce the effect of outlier estimates (average) and to test the confidence levels of estimates across a quarter (deviation).
Having worked years ago for one such aggregator/consultant, we understand how data on CE products is collected and what goes into formulating the estimates that are so heavily relied upon by the media and businesses.  That said, we also know the non-data influences that go into those estimates, and, depending on the firm and the analysts, the potential intensity of their effect on the results.
 With all of that said, as an adjunct to the hard data that we do collect, we are currently building a model that will take into account not only the hard data, but will try to quantify the influence of a variety of other factors and arrive at a hard near-term estimate and a longer-term directional prediction that takes into consideration some macro factors, and a few litmus tests on certain more emotionally driven factors that are subjective and carry less weight, but do have an influence on results and can help to predict DOT (Direction Over Time).  We note also that we will be using AI, not to perform calculations or for writing assistance, but to help to gather sentiment information.  We hope to have the model function effectively by mid-year and will continue to put together the aggregated data we always have in the interim.
In that regard, we were fortunate to be able to access estimates for TV set shipments from one particular source that includes both historic (from 2016) and forward-looking (2028) TV set shipment estimates, and while we are showing them here, we note that these are single source estimates, not our usual aggregated estimates.  The reason we show them is because they are an updated and complete set for the years 2016 to 2028, essentially 13 years without missing data.  While the totals are most important, the data also breaks down the TV set category between LCD TV and OLED TV, making it easy to visualize the relative size of the OLED share.
Again noting that this is single-source data, it can be seen that TV shipments have been on a general decline since 2020, a rather steep decline that ended in 2024 with a modest increase in TV set shipments, followed by expectations for almost flat shipments for this year and next, and declines into the out years.  TVs are no longer the communication hubs they have been in the past, now competing directly with smartphones, leaving TVs as more of an entertainment function as its preferred venue, which make unit growth difficult outside of larger screen sizes.  In terms of TV set shipments, in either the 2016 – 2024 or the 2016 – 2028 timeframes, the CAGR is negative.  As noted, TV set size has been a positive for the segment with 5.4% growth in TV set area in 2024, although area growth, while positive, is expected to see progressively less growth through 2028.  The area CAGR for the 2016 – 2024 period is 3.8% and is 3.3% for the extended period.
All in, the TV set business now has roots in share growth rather than unit or area growth, and that leads to a highly competitive environment.  AI, a potential draw for smartphones and laptops, is not as visible to consumers with TV sets as it is with other devices that can access generative AI, although AI-based imaging applications are of great benefit to TVs, even if the average consumer has no interaction with their function and notices little difference.  That leaves size and price as the magnets to draw in consumers and there are certainly limits for both, but we do expect the Chinese LCD display machine to keep pushing the average TV set size higher as they squeeze out the costs of 100”+ sets over the next 2 years.  That said, we keep our expectations for shipment growth low over the same period.

In 1921 the hot consumer electronics product was radio, but not the kind of radio you think.  It was HAM radio, aka amateur radio, where folks put odd looking antennas outside of their houses and spun tuning dials for hours just to speak to someone they did not know in a distant state or foreign country.  Two brothers, Theodore & Milton Deutschmann, decided to open a store in Boston to supply said ham radio equipment, and named it RadioShack (pvt) after the wooden structure that contained a ship’s radio equipment.  The company transitioned to more consumer-oriented products in the early 1950’s, much under its own private label brand (Realistic), but after expanding to nine stores and a mail-order business, the company began to have financial problems and was purchased by the Tandy Corp (TLF) for ~$300,000 to supplement Tandy’s other hobbyist business, which was leather working.
Tandy cut the vast number of nuts and bolt type SKU’s that the Shack offered, found cheaper private label suppliers, required that store managers had a stake in the stores they ran, and refocused the stores to cater to those looking for lower priced products.  By the 90’s the company was the largest manufacturer of personal computers and, for a short while, was the largest global electronics retailer.  Unfortunately Tandy decided to divest its computer manufacturing business and replaced much of its private label products with 3rd party brands while opening 17 big box stores (Incredible Universe).  Four years later it sold the few profitable IU stores in the chain and closed the rest. 
By the late 1990’s much of the electronic components that RadioShack sold became available online and RadioShack was slow to enter the online game, but did catch the cell phone wave in the mid-2000’s.  While it dominated the retail cell phone space for a while, a long string of unsuccessful ‘reformations’ and management changes took their toll and the company gained the title of the retailer with the worst customer experience for six consecutive years. RadioShack stock continued a slow decline through the 2010’s and the company tapped into a $250m loan in 2013 to survive.  Unfortunately the conditions of the loan limited the company from closing more than a small number of unprofitable stores and sales continued to decline through 2015. In February of that year the company defaulted on its loan, the stock was delisted, and the company was forced to file for bankruptcy.
A month later a two-part offer for the company from General Wireless (pvt) was approved ($160m for stores and $26m for brand name).  The deal included a partnership with Sprint (S), who became a co-tenant at many RadioShack stores, however two years later a Chapter 11 was filed and many of those stores became Sprint-only locations.  Much of the RadioShack inventory was liquidated at that time.  General Wireless actioned the RadioShack brand name for $17m, leaving it with the company’s warehouse, the authorized dealer network, the e-commerce business and 28 stores.  In 2020 the RadioShack IP, dealers, and online operation were sold to Retail Ecommerce Ventures (pvt), a buyer of defunct brands (Pier 1, Stein Mart, Modell’s, Linen’n Things, etc.) with the intent to use the name on a cryptocurrency platform where one could exchange other crypto for $RADIO tokens.  It was not a success.
During the first bankruptcy, Grupo Unicomer (pvt) purchased the RadioShack brand for use in Latin America (excluding Mexico) for $5m and in 2023 it purchased the global (70 countries) RadioShack brand.  For the first time in many years RadioShack had a presence at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show to revitalize the brand and attract a new generation of customers.  They have also partnered with a number of retailers who offer their products in-store and online, including Amazon (AMZN) and WalMart (WMT).  The company currently has 17 product categories leading to over 400 products and will add 200 more this year with a long-term target of 1,000, including 3rd party products, all under the company’s “Low Product Pricing Strategy”.
RadioShack was never known as a high-quality CE retailer, at times, their products were considered junk by many, but it is nice to see the name resurrected by a company large enough and well-managed enough to potentially breathe new life into the name.  Whether the concept and brand can survive in what is now a very different CE world remains a question, although Unicomer has been successful with the brand in Latin America for years.  Give it a year to 18 months and we will know if RadioShack will prosper once again or fade away forever.

​We are always a bit skeptical when it comes to CE industry estimates, as inclusions and exclusions can have an enormous effect on totals.  When such estimates come from industry associations, we also have to take into consideration the potential positive bias members who supply the  information might bring, balanced against the richness of such industry data.  The Consumer Technology Association produces a US technology industry revenue estimate based on their analysis of over 200 hardware products and services, and while we don’t have inclusionary data, we present it as incremental information for 2024 and 2025.
The forecast for 2025, based on the accuracy of the 2024 final estimate, calls for a 3.2% increase in US Consumer Technology spending in 2025, comprised of 2.6% hardware growth and 4.6% software & services growth after 2024’s 2.5% growth (1.1% hardware and 5.2% software & services).  The optimism for the hardware segment, which comprised 66.2% of total spending in 2024, is based on the replacement cycle for hardware purchased during the COVID pandemic, the ending of support for Windows™ 10, and, of course, AI, as well as new wearable form factors.  While software & services are expected to see less growth in 2025 than in the previous year, the main driver is also AI, under the heading of AIaaS, or AI as a service.

​That’s the good news, however the CTA also commissioned a study that attempts to quantify the impact of incoming President Trump’s proposed tariffs, using two scenarios, one with a 10% across the board tariff on all goods imported into the US and a 70% tariff on all Chinese imports, and the second based on a 20% general import tariff and a 100% Chinese product tariff.  While we expect that whatever tariffs are actually put in place will be far more complicated than these scenarios, at least these ‘best’ (?) and ‘worst’ scenarios set the bar as to the impact they will have on various US CE product categories.
The study predicts that the greatest decline in demand, in either scenario, would be felt in the laptop and tablet segment, along with monitors and gaming consoles, where the best-case scenario generates a 40%+ decline in demand.  Other product categories, again in the best-case scenario, see declines from 26% (smartphones) to 14% (desktop PCs), while the worst-case declines run between 22% (laptops and tablets) to 7% higher than the best-case scenario for Li-Ion batteries.  We note that these are very difficult calculations to make, and we expect have included a relatively small, if any, contribution from the negative psychology that such tariffs might foist on US CE consumers, which we expect will further dampen demand as near-term inventory pricing gives way to tariffed inventory as the year progresses 
That said, we expect brands to enter the CE space in 2025 extremely cautiously, as planning production against the potential variability of US CE demand is an unenviable task.  More likely, that hesitancy will lead to a weak 1Q, with the hope for a better 2H, as country-by-country tariff deals are worked on by the new administration.  We expect any resolution on trade with major partners will sound good when they are announced but will have to be carefully monitored as the year progresses to avoid a large ‘catch-up’ 4th quarter or missed targets, so we give credit to anyone willing to take a stab at tariff impact, knowing that the scenario could change in a minute and likely will.

In the old days, the Consumer Electronics Show was a world class event, with almost every consumer electronics company happily showing off their latest and greatest wares to an adoring public[1].  Major product announcements were made at CES, with flashbulbs popping and beautiful models handing out tote bags emblazoned with company logos or sparkly key chains with company catch  phases, but over the years the show’s visitor’s seemed to change, with many apparently more interested in collecting geegaws that they hoped would one day become valuable memorabilia, while Chinese visitors took pictures of everything.  Eventually the floor became so crowded and frenetic that companies began taking suites in nearby hotels to speak with potential customers in a more sales conducive environment, and a few decided that the competition for press coverage at the show was just not worth the expense, as a small booth (10 x 10) starts at $10,000 (non-primary location) and can run to $20,000 for a better location, while a large (40 x 40) booth in a primary location can run several hundred thousands of dollars, before the cost of shipping products, booth materials, and personnel  what can be very long distances.
Here are a few of the majors that no longer have representation at CES:
Apple (AAPL)
Huawei (pvt)
Dell (DELL)
Hewlett Packard (HPE)
Nintendo (7974.JP)
Sony (SNE)
Vizio (VZIO)
TCL (000100.CH)
Tesla (TSLA)
 
So, while we expect there will be many announcements at CES this year, it is hard to get excited about LG’s (066570.KS) new line of OLED TVs, which is almost the same as last year’s line of OLED TVs, or the three new colors for a smartphone that is rarely sold in the US.  That said, when it comes to odd CE products there is no comparison to the devices that are shown at CES, regardless of whether they actually become commercial products, and even before the show has begun, a few announcements have already caught our eye.
A few of said oddities come from LG Lab, an ‘experimental marketing arm’ of LG that is expected to help the company realize it goal of becoming a ‘smart life solutions’ company, whatever that means.  The product from LG Lab that seems to have garnered the most attention this year is a device called the DukeBox.  The DukeBox is a combination of ‘new and old’ technology, according to the marketing department, which, in reality is a ‘portable’ speaker powered by vacuum tubes (‘old’) with a transparent OLED screen (‘new’) cover.  In its normal mode the display is transparent, allowing the user to see the glowing vacuum tubes that power the speaker, while at the flick of a switch, the display can become a sort of fireplace by displaying what marketing calls a cozy fireplace.  In order to satisfy those times when listening to music while staring at glowing vacuum tubes, or watching a crackling fire image is not enough, the screen can display content, although with a bit of transparency, so as not to miss the excitement of vacuum tubes.  Not only has no price been associated with the device, but there is no guarantee that it will become an actual product, or an actual product that sells, but you have to give LG credit for taking such a large leap into the ‘smart life solutions’ morass.
But wait, there’s more…  While the DukeBox was interesting when viewed from the outer reaches of the Twilight Zone, LG Labs really took the bull by the horns when it released the original version of the ‘Bon Voyage’ last August at the global wellness festival known as Wanderlust Korea.  The Bon Voyage was a 20 meter square two story structure that one could bring (perhaps ‘tow’ would be more apt) to a desired location, and ‘spend time his or her way that blends with the surrounding environment’, although the Bon Voyage in Fig. 2 does not seem to be ‘blending’ with the environment.  The marketing literature goes on to emphasize ergonomic stairs and a feeling of openness, due to one wall being glass, but notes that the Bon Voyage comes with air conditioning, home appliances, IoT devices, and furniture, so the user can maintain a comfortable lifestyle.
But wait, there’s even more…  LG Labs has decided that the Bon Voyage was not quite able to maintain the ‘life quality at home into nature’ and redesigned the Bon Voyage for this year’s CES.  The newly designed Bon Voyage is now the size of a camper (~6.5’ wide x 7.2’ high x 12.5’ deep) and is equipped with a bed, refrigerator, electric stove, water purifier, Styler (steamer to remove clothing wrinkles) and a shoe steam cleaner.  The less bulky size allows the Bon Voyage to be connected to a car and as a place your weird uncle can stay during the holidays.
While we are not choosing LG devices for any particular reason, and give credit to the company for at least trying to push the envelope a bit (We wonder what happened to last year’s “StandbyMe” battery-operated portable TV?), we are not sure why someone might want a transparent speaker, and a fancy camper with a shoe deodorizer is still a camper.  That said, LG is a big corporation with lots of R&D dollars to spend, so why not spend it throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it sticks?  It has to be better than calling last year’s smartphone color ‘graphite’ titanium gray this year, last year’s ‘lavender’, this year’s titanium violet, and last year’s ‘phantom black’, this year’s (you guessed it…) Titanium Black.
 


[1] You must be in the CE biz in some way to gain entrance.

We have read a considerable amount of Chinese tech propaganda concerning China’s push into the OLED display space and how, ‘with hard work and an undying devotion to China’s persistence and manufacturing expertise’, they have unseated the South Korean ‘dynasty’ and are poised to take over the OLED space, and while China’s OLED producers have made considerable progress toward becoming major contenders in the OLED display space, there are some points to be made.

• First, no matter who was the market share (units of dollars) in the early days of OLED display production, they faced a loss of share as others began to enter the niche.  With Samsung the leader in the small panel OLED space, especially the small panel flexible OLED space, the company was bound to lose share over time, which has been the case.  If China’s BOE, Visionox (002387.CH), or Tianma, had been the first to market, they would have faced the same fate.
• Second, on a unit volume basis, Samsung is still the leader in terms of unit shipments for small panel flexible OLED displays. In fact in only one quarter over the last 3 ½ years did Samsung’s unit shipment ratio fall below 2x that of the producer in 2nd place. 
• Third, while panel producers that produce both LCD and OLED displays rarely break out segment profitability, we expect there have been only a few instances when Chinese OLED producers were profitable for two consecutive quarters.  Samsung Display (pvt), at least on an operating basis, has been profitable for the last ten quarters, although we note that what remained of Samsung Display’s large panel LCD business likely had a negative effect on the early quarterly numbers and the most recent quarters would be influenced by SDC’s QD/OLED large panel business to a degree.

All in, yes, Samsung Display will continue to face increasing competition in the small panel flexible OLED space but remains the overall leader.  Perhaps in the future, one or more Chinese OLED producers will overtake SDC in terms of unit volume, but we expect it will be some time before any Chinese small panel OLED competitor becomes more profitable than SDC over more than a quarter or so.  With 1 new small panel OLED fab and three large panel OLED fabs under construction in China (one additional fab in planning stage), and 2 large panel OLED fabs under construction in Korea, it will be a race to see who can fill those fabs profitably, especially given the current weak state of demand for CE products, but we doubt SDC will lose its position as the most profitable small panel OLED display producer in the near-term.

There are thought to be 5.56 billion active mobile phones across the globe, and almost every one is Wi-Fi capable.  There are billions of other Wi-Fi enabled devices, ranging from laptops to smart TVs and there are over 15 billion IoT devices connected to the internet, many of which use Wi-Fi to make that connection.  With cellular users numbering a mere 6.4 billion, Wi-Fi is the most ubiquitous network protocol globally, yet we rarely pay any attention to this technology that supports industrial, commercial, and residential users 24/7, unless we hear the words, “Wi-Fi is down!”, at which point panic sets in for most users, along with either a call to tech support or having to go into the cabinet under the TV to see if the router lights are flashing.
Those boxes, and their larger counterparts in commercial systems, grab the text messages, e-mails, pictures, videos, and data that you send, right out of the air.  They package each bit, and send it out into the world over cable, fiber, or cell.  Cellular folks laugh at Wi-Fi’s limited range (see below), but cellular signals, particularly 5G cellular, are quite easily blocked by building structures and geographical obstacles, while Wi-Fi is designed to be a low-power system used as a local network.  The comparison is apples to oranges now, but next year things will get better for Wi-Fi users as Wi-Fi 7 standards will be finalized and the potential for substantial improvements in Wi-Fi will be underway.

Typically, a new standard means that equipment manufacturers will begin adding Wi-Fi 7 capabilities to new models as they are released, however some CE manufacturers have taken the preliminary Wi-Fi 7 protocol and built those capabilities into new devices.  15 smartphone models have been released this year having Wi-Fi 7 capabilities, one back in December of last year, all of which are hoping that the protocol does not change radically from the pre-ratified standard on which they have based their phones.  We do note that Qualcomm (QCOM) released its Fast-Connect 7800 Wi-Fi 7 chipset in May 2022, which will likely be the basis for most of the early devices that have Wi-Fi 7 capabilities.  There are also a few early Wi-Fi 7 routers from TP-Link (pvt), Netgear (NTGR), Asus (2357.TT), and Linksys (2354.TT) that support the pre-ratified Wi-Fi 7 standard.
All of that said, how is Wi-Fi 7 going to benefit the user?  Wi-Fi 7 is faster, actually much faster than current (Wi-Fi 6 & 6e) Wi-Fi protocols.  Wi-Fi 6 & 6e have a maximum data rate of 9.6GB/sec, while Wi-Fi 7 has a max rate of 46GB/sec, almost 5 times faster, although those are rates that are rarely reached in normal use.  Current Wi-Fi divides available spectrum into what are called ‘sub-carriers’, using a technique called orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA – This will not be on the test…).  Each user is assigned a subset of the subsets, which allows users to share channels and bandwidth.  Wi-Fi 7 will expand the size of the channels (2x), which has not changed in over 10 years, and allows all three available frequency bands to be ‘linked’ to allow for higher throughput and lower latency.  The new standard also allows Wi-Fi 7 to carry frames (packets of data with transmission information included) that are 12 bits rather than the 10 that are used now, which leads to a 20% gain in data rates.
Of course, while this sounds impressive, there are issues, mostly regulatory, as no regions in the US support the three-channel approach that Wi-Fi 7 uses.  The FCC is currently working on a plan for allocating the channels and bandwidth in the 6GHz band, which does not require a license, so once that plan is completed, network operators will be able to begin the use of Wi-Fi 7 for customers and equipment manufacturers, seeing a less risky path toward building in Wi-Fi 7 capabilities.  That said, changes in important standards like Wi-Fi take time to propagate through Wi-Fi infrastructure, especially when they are as significant as the changes between Wi-Fi 6e and Wi-Fi 7. 
More complicated antenna systems, potential interference, and even higher power consumption issues must be balanced by designers of Wi-Fi 7 equipment, so we keep our timeline for widespread Wi-Fi 7 adoption a bit more extended than industry members might propose.  However, we are still optimistic about the change and how it will be accepted by consumers, although they will have to buy new routers to take advantage of the upgrades.  There are many out there that will ask the question, “What is Wi-Fi 7”, “What’s a router?” and “How much is this going to cost?”, which will slow early adoption to those that recognize or need the benefits.  The rest will be deluged by carriers offering free Wi-Fi router upgrades if they sign up as a new customer. 

​While not officially confirmed by the South Korean government, it has been said that the US has granted Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and SK Hynix (000660.KS) a one-year extension to the US export rules on semiconductor equipment that were put into effect last October.  The rule, which would have tacitly included fabs situated in China but owned and run by both South Korean companies, would have prevented both from expanding or upgrading existing facilities, making them non-competitive with Japanese, Taiwanese, and other Chinese fabs that might find local sources for certain equipment.  We expect official announcements will be made once the current grace period ends at the end of September.

In the early days of streaming services, the ability to choose content was a valuable resource for viewers and there were no reference points as to the relative value of such services, but as streaming services have proliferated over the years, price points have become more visible as battles for hit content continue to push streaming service providers to spend more for content creation, eventually finding that those costs must be passed on to subscribers.  During 2020 and 2021, the COVID pandemic pushed consumers toward almost any kind of streaming content, and monthly bills became secondary to the insatiable need for entertainment, but as the pandemic subsided and subscribers faced the icy fingers of inflation for the first time in many years, they started to think a bit more about what it was they were paying for and how much value it actually had, now that they were no longer tethered to their screens.
As streaming subscribers, we found ourselves in the same situation, subscribed to a number of streaming services, some of which we could not remember why or when we subscribed.  Some of that indulgence was due to billing, as direct billing through Paypal (PYPL) or similar services made monthly charges more abstract and bundling under Roku (ROKU) or other services almost hid them all together.   Eventually the day comes when subscribers sit down and decide that they must ‘figure it out’ and dump those streamers that provide lesser value. 
That said, we were curious to see what the monthly cost of streaming services has done over the last 10+ years, which led us to put together this data on streaming pricing.  The most meaningful timeframe is the period from 2019 to 2023, which includes the year preceding COVID and roughly a year (mid 2022 to current) after the pandemic.  The overall change in price among the major streaming platforms shown here during that period has declined by 10.5%, with HBO (WBD) leading the charge down with a 33.3% decline in aggregate price.  The combined Netflix (NFLX) prices (all tiers) was down 18.8% but Amazon (AMZN) Prime and Hulu were both up over the period by 15.4% and 15.0% respectively, while Disney (DIS) was up 14.3%.  While the composite numbers are helpful, the trends are far more obvious when looking at the charts. 
We do note that the 10.5% composite price decline seem across all categories over the 5 -year period is primarily a result of Netflix’s price decreases (all categories) this year, which puts its pricing below its initial 2007 pricing, which should indicate the increasingly competitive nature of the streaming business.  For those streamers that go back far enough, the 10-year data shows Amazon Prime up the most (81.8%), Hulu up 15% and Netflix up 8.3%, so if you are looking for price stability over time, it would seem Netflix is the choice.  Of course, much in the streaming world is based on content offering, but no matter how you look at content, any evaluation would be subjective, which makes it moot in the ‘Fun with Data’ genre, but Figure 7, which shows top 5 streamer subscribers and y/y growth, indicates that the overall subscriber count continues to grow, albeit a bit down from the 2020 – 2022 years.  Again, that would seem to indicate that subscribers are still shelling out cash for streaming services but streamers themselves are facing a far more competitive world than in early and pre-pandemic years.
We note that the subscriber data, in most cases, does not come from the steaming services themselves, so we consider the data somewhat questionable, particularly that of Amazon Prime, but it does give some visual representation of the trends.