Cisco and Chairman Emeritus John Chambers have been trying to get tax overhaul “pushed through” Congress for 15 years, “and so we are we are quite pleased that we are at the point we are at now,” CEO Chuck Robbins told the company’s annual shareholder meeting Monday. “There are lots of dynamics between the House version and the Senate version that we are obviously providing input on,” said Robbins, who assumed the executive chairman post from Chambers, who stepped down from the board effective with the annual meeting. “The biggest thing that we believe is important not only is a competitive tax rate for U.S. companies,” but also “the repatriation of foreign earnings would be very positive for us,” he said. “So, we are optimistic, or maybe I should say hopeful, that we get something done here in the next few weeks.”
Broadcom efforts to buy Qualcomm date to April 2016 and involved talks with a Qualcomm senior management team that initially showed signs of being receptive to a deal, said a preliminary proxy statement filed Monday at the SEC. Broadcom last week began courting Qualcomm shareholders to vote for 11 directors that would be friendly toward approving Broadcom’s buy (see 1712060065). Qualcomm didn’t comment Monday. Broadcom board member Kenneth Hao, managing director of the Silver Lake venture capital firm, was an initial go-between when he arranged two meetings with Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and his Qualcomm counterpart Steve Mollenkopf in late-summer 2016, said the proxy. The meetings ended with Mollenkopf and Chief Financial Officer George Davis indicating “they would be assembling a larger team to evaluate a potential combination transaction with Broadcom and would be in touch ... once they were ready,” the proxy said. Those were the last face-to-face discussions, it said. After Qualcomm's board unanimously rejected the bid Nov. 13, Tan left Mollenkopf a voicemail that “reiterated that Broadcom stood ready to engage with Qualcomm,” it said. He texted Mollenkopf “asking for a time to speak,” it said. Mollenkopf texted back Qualcomm's announcement “spoke for itself,” it said.
Broadcom will follow through with its decision, announced last month at the White House (see 1711020069), to move co-headquarters to Delaware from Singapore “whether or not there is corporate tax reform” enacted in the U.S., said Chief Financial Officer Tom Krause on a Wednesday earnings call. Broadcom wants to make the move "in a manner intended to be tax-free to shareholders," said Krause. “We are confident that our shareholders will support this move,” but the "final form and timing" of the "re-domiciliation" and the shareholder vote to approve it “will depend in part on tax reform efforts” in Congress, he said. Broadcom also remains determined to buy Qualcomm for $70 a share, despite the target board’s rejection of the offer last month (see 1711130031), said Krause. Broadcom told Qualcomm earlier this week of its plan to nominate a “highly qualified” slate of 11 directors to run for seats on the Qualcomm board at Qualcomm’s next annual meeting in March (see the personals section of the Dec. 6 issue of this publication), he said. Packing the board with directors friendly toward approving Broadcom’s buy would be a big step toward a hostile Qualcomm takeover, but Krause said “it remains our strong preference to engage in a constructive dialogue with Qualcomm." Broadcom is confident it could complete a Qualcomm buy within a year after signing a “definitive agreement” on the acquisition and that the combined company would become “a global communications leader,” he said.
None of the tech groups we canvassed is taking sides in Tuesday’s special election in Alabama between Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore to fill the Senate seat vacated when Jeff Sessions became attorney general. Neither CTA nor CEO Gary Shapiro is taking a “public position," he told us Wednesday. CTA’s political action committee also “isn’t supporting either candidate,” confirmed Tiffany Moore, CTA vice president-congressional affairs. NAB "has not taken a position or donated NABPAC money to either candidate," a spokesman said. The Information Technology Industry Council and CompTIA are staying neutral, their spokesmen said Thursday.
The top TV maker is an exception in the industry opposing EPA plans in Energy Star Version 8.0 TV to require enabling automatic brightness control by default in most of presets (see 1711300056). Samsung supports Energy Star’s “continued recognition” of ABC “in the default viewing mode as an effective energy-saving feature,” the company commented Nov. 7, in a filing posted Thursday on the revised final draft. ABC “reduces energy consumption and automatically adjusts brightness to match the ambient lighting of the viewing environment,” said the company.
Vizio agrees with CTA that the Energy Star Version 8.0 TV specification “moves past the realm of encouraging television manufacturers to produce energy efficient products, and instead dictates how those products should actually be designed and used by consumers,” Ken Lowe, vice president and co-founder, commented, filed Nov. 6 and posted Thursday at the agency’s website on the spec’s Oct. 24 revised final draft (see 1711090063). Vizio, like CTA, wants EPA to withhold releasing V8.0 until the agency resolves TV makers’ concerns, said Lowe, threatening to withdraw if the agency releases the spec anyway. EPA representatives didn’t comment Thursday, but had said the agency is "carefully considering all comments” received on the revised final draft, including CTA’s claim the proposed July 1 effective date is “problematic” (see 1711100002).
“Enhanced” public safety benefits will abound with ATSC 3.0, top America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) officials told FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel in Monday meetings, said an ex parte letter posted Wednesday in docket 16-142. The public safety services that APTS stations provide now to first responders, and in alert and warning, “will increase and expand” with 3.0, said the officials, including CEO Patrick Butler and Chief Operating Officer Lonna Thompson. “ATSC 3.0 will allow the ability to ‘wake up’ receiver devices when emergency alerts are transmitted overnight and will improve accessibility measures” for hearing- and visually-impaired viewers, they said. The FCC voted Nov. 16 to authorize the voluntary deployment of 3.0 over the dissents of Rosenworcel and her fellow Democrat Mignon Clyburn (see 1711160060). There’s “a lot to be excited” about with 3.0, including Ultra HD picture quality, immersive audio, advanced emergency alerts and “innovative interactive services,” said Rosenworcel in her Nov. 16 dissenting statement. “But what we do today is rush this standard to market with an ugly disregard for the consumer consequences.” The Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance hopes by 2019 to have in place a “beta solution” for 3.0-capable emergency alerts, said alliance Executive Director John Lawson (see 1711200023). APTS and the AWARN Alliance were petitioners with CTA and NAB in April 2016 to ask the FCC to launch the 3.0 rulemaking (see 1604130065).
As the industry awaits the market deployment of 5G, there’s “good activity still on 4G,” said Analog Devices CEO Vincent Roche on a Tuesday earnings call. With the “heavy activity on 4.5G,” and 5G in market “trials right now,” Roche thinks “the boundaries between 4.5G and 5G are blurring to some extent,” he said. “Indications” are strong the 5G market will “start to ramp” in late 2018 into 2019, and “peak to 2020,” he said. With the challenges of “getting 5G into play,” and with the increasing “demands for mobile data, we're still working hard on the classical problems of integration, design agility, power consumption,” he said.
Voice-controlled speakers “are probably the hottest category for this holiday” in tech, said Stephen Baker, NPD vice president-industry analysis, on a Monday webinar. The category is “just going to explode, and a big reason for that” is that the two biggest platforms, Google Home and Amazon Echo, “are being sold by brands that really don’t care about price,” he said. That NPD estimates U.S. household penetration of voice speakers is only 10 percent means they have “a long way to go” before reaching consumer mainstream, he said. He sees holiday tech revenue rising 0.5 percent this year, the sector’s best Q4 performance in years. “Consumers, as we’ve seen all through 2017, are not put off by higher prices,” he said.
The FCC will use the first five years of ATSC 3.0's voluntary deployment “to monitor how the marketplace handles patent royalties for essential patents, but we will not require reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) licensing at this time,” said a footnote in the order it released (see 1711200055) in Tuesday's Daily Digest. Commissioners approved the order Thursday in a 3-2 party-line vote (see 1711160060).