THE DAILY SCOPE, 11/19/21: Anyone tiring of the relentless need to stay on top of e-commerce can take heart with a fascinating trend. As NBC News reports, millennials and other shoppers tired of spending days in front of screens are turning to mail-order print catalogs for their shopping needs. Even Amazon has been producing a print toy catalog since 2018, the same year that Sears stopped printing a revived version of its iconic holiday Wish Book. It’s reminiscent of the revival of vinyl, cassettes, notebooks, turntables, and other retro products that had been left for dead. People are tired of being targeted all day with optimized ads and lures to keep engaging with those mobile and desktop touchscreens. As publishers of a print magazine, we here at Dealerscope welcome this trend!
In inventory-improvement news, President Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week to discuss moves to help alleviate the continued pressure on the supply chain. Facing blowback for the rise in oil and gasoline prices and inflation in general, both leaders discussed releasing oil reserves, which has already led to a drop in oil prices this week. While we may not see that reflected in gas or other fuel stations for a few days or weeks, it may help keep shipping and delivery costs in check, just in time for the holidays.
And now to do a 180 back towards neverending upgrades and progress, Mediatek has announced that it will be unveiling WiFi 7 technology and products at CES 2022 in January. That’s right; before you even had a chance to upgrade to white-hot WiFi 6 (802.11ax) – much less sell compatible products to holiday shoppers – the state-of-the-art goalposts are moving yet again. WiFi 7 (802.11be) is purportedly 2.4 times faster than WiFi 6, but speed isn’t everything for everyone, especially if your customers are among the 27.6 U.S. households that don’t have home internet at all (and the 265,331 that still use dial-up internet). This brings us back to the just-passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which has set aside $65 billion to improve Internet access in underserved areas of the U.S..
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