Dish Network for competitive reasons isn't ready to publicly discuss its wireless “go-to-market strategy,” said Chairman Charlie Ergen on a Q4 earnings call Wednesday. “We’re not that stupid to disclose that,” said Ergen.
Nvidia expects to take a $100 million revenue hit from the coronavirus in fiscal Q1 ending late April, though it's “still early and the ultimate effect is difficult to estimate,” said Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress on a Q4 call Thursday. This “reflects what may be supply challenges” or a reduction in “overall demand,” she said. Nvidia gets about 30 percent of gaming revenue from China, she said. Q1 gaming revenue likely will decline by "low-double" digits sequentially from Q4, which ended Jan. 26, she said. China also is "a very important market" for Nvidia's data center business, she said. Revenue in that sector "moves from quarter to quarter, just based on the overall end-customer mix as well as the system builders that they may choose," she said. "It's a little harder to determine" the impact of the coronavirus impact in that sector, she said. Q4 sales rose 41 percent from the year-ago quarter to about $3.1 billion. It expects Q1 revenue to be about flat. "Discussions with China’s regulatory agency, the State Administration for Market Regulation," on the takeover of Mellanox "are progressing," and the deal likely will be completed in the early part of this calendar year, Nvidia said. The stock closed 7 percent higher Friday at $289.79.
China's coronavirus outbreak is threatening operations "in the world's largest tech manufacturing hub," said S&P Global Ratings Thursday. Its "base case" is that the virus will be contained globally next month, and assumes "no new transmissions" in April. That would allow travel and logistical restrictions to be "unwound" by the middle of Q2, it said. If the epidemic "proves more difficult to contain, the effect on the tech sector could be extensive," it said: "Lengthy factory shutdowns or significant underutilization could materially lower the global output of tech components, subassemblies, or finished goods." Applied Materials dispatched “business continuity teams” to the regions in China hardest hit in the coronavirus outbreak early in the crisis, said CEO Gary Dickerson on a fiscal Q1 call Wednesday. “With travel and logistics restrictions, we do expect changes in the timing of revenues during the year. We are actively managing the situation in collaboration with our customers and suppliers.” Q1 ended Jan. 26. The company's display business will feed off “all of the trillion connected devices that will be happening,” and in 2021 will be “up a fair amount over what we see in 2020,” said Dickerson. “The capital intensity is rising as new technologies are adopted, so we see a good opportunity in our core business.”
Sonos and Google face a Feb. 26 filing deadline for a joint discovery statement in their patent dispute at the International Trade Commission, said an order (login required) in docket 337-TA-1191 signed Tuesday by Chief Administrative Law Judge Charles Bullock. The ITC voted last week to open a Tariff Act Section 337 investigation into Sonos allegations that Google smart speakers and other devices infringe its multiroom audio patents (see 2002060070). The joint discovery statement instructs the companies to state their positions on a wide variety of procedural issues, including any recommended limits on documents or witnesses, plus an estimated target date when the investigation will be completed and whether any settlement discussions are planned. The Sonos complaint seeks a limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders against the allegedly infringing products.
Built into Akamai’s 2020 revenue forecast is the assumption that it will “participate” in many of the new over-the-top video services “that are coming to market, and some that are expanding,” said Chief Financial Officer Edward McGowan on a Q4 call Tuesday. The network provider expects 2020 revenue growth to be in a range of $3.06 billion-$3.11 billion, vs. $2.89 billion in 2019, said McGowan. “In addition to more global expansion of existing OTT offerings that have been announced for later this year, we are aware of several new direct-to-consumer OTT launches planned for late spring and early summer” that haven’t been publicized, he said. Akamai also is counting on a big second-half revenue bounce from streaming for the Tokyo Olympics in Q3 and the presidential election “cycle” in Q4, he said. “It's really hard to call how successful these will be,” he said of the new OTT service offerings. “We have conversations with the customers. We know what their plans are. We make sure we build our capacity to be able to capture as much of the traffic that we can. But it really does come down to end-consumer demand.” Akamai’s goal is to “grow our share, have even more massive scale,” said CEO Thomson Leighton. “Already today, we're the go-to player, if you ask any of the big OTT guys, and we want to grow that further.”
State plaintiffs’ arguments T-Mobile would “pursue anticompetitive behavior” after buying Sprint weren't “sufficiently compelling" to block the transaction, wrote U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero for the Southern District of New York. Monday's 173-page decision (in Pacer) was released Tuesday (see 2002100061). He attached no new conditions.
The International Trade Commission voted to open a Tariff Act Section 337 investigation into Sonos allegations that Google smart speakers and other devices infringe its multiroom audio patents (see 2001230001), said an investigation notice Thursday (login required) in docket 337-TA-1191. Sonos seeks a limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders against the allegedly infringing products. Google has 20 days to respond. The vote Wednesday was 4-0 to open the investigation, with Commissioner Rhonda Schmidtlein, a Democrat, recusing herself. “Sonos has made misleading statements about our history of working together," emailed Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda Thursday. "Our technology and devices were designed independently. We deny their claims vigorously, and will be defending against them.” Sonos didn't comment.
SiriusXM’s 360L interactive vehicular platform “is now the plan of record” with the automotive OEMs, said CEO Jim Meyer on a Q4 call Tuesday. Installations of 360L will reach 2 million vehicles by the end of 2020, “and will accelerate sharply in the years to come,” he said. The platform marries "satellite broadcasting with two-way internet connectivity,” said Meyer. SiriusXM expects 360L to improve paid-subscriber "conversions" and reduce churn, he said. “It’s our first platform that can handle significant over-the-air updates.” The "backward-compatible" platform can introduce new features across the “fleet” of SiriusXM car installations, said Meyer. “This provides a path to move Pandora capabilities into large volumes of cars at some point.” Introducing 360L was “harder than we thought,” conceded Meyer. “It’s the first time we really had a mammoth amount of real-time data coming back” from SiriusXM vehicles, he said. Figuring out how to “accumulate” and “organize” that information brought “significant challenges,” he said. “We’ve learned a lot.” It’s ready “to step on the gas” and speed 360L’s penetration, he said. All major automotive OEMs are expected to adopt SiriusXM's new “wideband chipset” over the next few years, said Meyer.
“History suggests” that new generations of video codecs are developed on seven-to-nine-year “cycles” and that each new generation reduces bit rate by up to half, said ATSC’s Planning Team 4 (PT4) in a “summary” report on future video technologies approved Nov. 19 and posted Tuesday at atsc.org. PT4, chaired by Glenn Reitmeier, NBCUniversal senior vice president-advanced technology standards, began its review of future video technologies to study what “methods” are “available to us to add a codec” to ATSC 3.0, said ATSC in March (see 1903210057). MPEG’s “work plan” for the development of the next-generation Versatile Video Coding codec to be completed this year is targeting 50 percent “efficiency improvement” compared with the H.265 codec built into ATSC 3.0, said the report. MPEG also is working on the Essential Video Coding codec, which seeks “core profile performance” similar to H.265, using a set of “royalty-free coding tools,” also planned for completion in 2020, it said. EVC would be administered under “a simple, transparent licensing structure for a more efficient main profile promised within two years after publication,” it said. It’s “possible” that future video codec development “may become increasingly optimized toward specific applications,” said the report. “Given this possibility, future codec considerations for ATSC standards should include requirements driven by broadcast operations and business models, particularly in requirements such as compression efficiency and latency. ATSC needs to “communicate” those requirements to MPEG and other codec developers in “appropriate liaisons,” it said.
Sony is “very concerned about the spread” of the coronavirus (see 2002040063), said Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki in scripted remarks to analysts in Tokyo, mirroring others. “It is difficult to fully grasp what is going on, but we are exerting all efforts to gather information and assess the situation, and we are taking action where possible.” Sony extends “our condolences to the families of the people who have passed away, and our thoughts are with those who have been infected,” he said. The company reported quarterly results Tuesday for the three months ended Dec. 31. Concerns mounted last week the virus could affect U.S. tech and other supply chains (see 2001310052).