Paul Gluckman

Broadcom wireless revenue of $1.8 billion rose 21% from the year-ago quarter, “consistent with the launch of our customers’ next-generation phones during the quarter,” said CEO Hock Tan. “We expect continuing strong demand” into fiscal Q1 ending late January, he told investors Thursday. Fiscal Q4 ended Oct. 31. Broadcom’s broadband revenue grew 29%. “This was driven by the continued strong growth in deployment by service providers globally” of next-generation passive optical networks with Wi-Fi 6 and 6E “access gateways,” he said. The stock closed up 8.3% Friday at $631.68.

The semiconductor industry is in a “renewed drive” amid the chip crunch to install more factory capacity at “the mature nodes” for automotive, industrial and IoT applications, and “as the chip market leads, the photomask market follows,” said Photronics CEO Peter Kirlin on a call Wednesday for fiscal Q4 ended Oct. 31. Photronics manufactures photomasks for producing chips and flat panels, and analysts view the company as a bellwether of semiconductor and display industry health. The company said Q1 revenue and profit may rise sequentially; Q4 revenue was $181.3 million, "the third consecutive quarterly record, up 6% sequentially and 21% year-over-year." The stock soared 26% higher Wednesday, closing at $17.91.

Qorvo thinks 5G is still “in the very early innings,” CEO Bob Bruggeworth told a virtual Barclays investor conference Wednesday. “As we start to see the second- and third-generation devices being rolled out in 5G, they continue to add more bands,” and “complexity” in the antenna area “goes up,” he said. The addition of “more complex Wi-Fi” is also more prevalent in new generations of 5G devices, he said. “We've talked a lot about Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E. We've also started to expand in the Wi-Fi 7. So we expect those trends to continue.” Increased complexity is reminiscent of the “same discussions” for LTE, he said. Ultra-wideband technology is already built into the iOS ecosystem, and “we expect that to now start to proliferate through the Android ecosystem,” he said.

Persistent semiconductor shortages will induce half the world’s top 10 automotive OEMs to design their own chips for vehicle electrification and autonomy by 2025, giving them better control over their product road maps and supply chains, reported Gartner Tuesday. Ford foreshadowed the trend last month when it struck a nonbinding agreement with GlobalFoundries to collaborate on R&D for future “feature-rich” chips (see 2111180016). Automotive semiconductor supply chains “are complex,” said Gartner Vice President-Research Gaurav Gupta. “In most cases, chip makers are traditionally Tier 3 or Tier 4 suppliers to automakers, which means it usually takes a while until they adapt to the changes affecting automotive market demand. This lack of visibility in the supply chain has increased automotive OEMs' desire to have greater control over their semiconductor supply.” The chip crunch is especially acute among mature semiconductor technology nodes where capacity expansion is difficult, said Gupta. “That the automotive industry has been conservative in qualifying older devices on larger wafer sizes has also hurt them and will likely motivate them to take chip design in-house.” NXP Semiconductors CEO Kurt Sievers described the “enormous depth and complexity” of the automotive supply chain when he told analysts on a quarterly call last month that it takes coordinated timing and delivery “of up to 30,000 parts and up to 1,500 different semiconductors from hundreds of suppliers to build just one single car” (see 2111020032).

Dish Network “is a factor now” in the competitive wireless space “with millions of customers,” T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert told a UBS investors conference Monday. Dish has a “fantastic” arrangement with mobile virtual network operators, he said. “At some point, they'll start releasing their own network” for 5G, said Sievert, “and we take them at face value on that. We've always assumed that in our forecast.” Dish didn’t comment Tuesday. Chairman Charlie Ergen said last month that “we’ll get our fair share” as the “fourth player” in the wireless market (see 2111040048). The T-Mobile CEO thinks “it's really neat to see how people are responding” to 5G, he said. About 30% of T-Mobile customers own 5G smartphones, he said. Those who subscribe to T-Mobile’s Magenta Max premium unlimited 5G data plan are doing “8X more gaming than people on LTE,” plus “many more times of video consumption,” he said.

Uploading a COVID-19 proof-of-vaccination card from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Clear smartphone app and its embedded Health Pass is the most expedient way for CES 2022 attendees who are fully inoculated to pick up their badges on arrival in Las Vegas, say CTA’s health and safety protocols. Those who don’t have the Clear app or another form of digital vaccine proof will be diverted to one of five customer service centers at various CES 2022 venues to show their physical CDC cards. “Individuals are considered fully vaccinated 14 days after their second dose of multi-dose vaccines and 14 days after the single-dose vaccines,” say the protocols. “CES will strictly enforce this schedule.” The protocols mean that anyone visiting a badge pickup location on the show’s opening morning Jan. 5 will have needed to get a final vaccine dose at least three days before Christmas. We queried Clear to ask how the app can differentiate between authentic and counterfeit CDC cards. Clear’s “digital vaccine solutions link a verified identity to COVID-19 insights to help deter potential fraud,” emailed spokesperson Ken Lisaius. “The CDC card upload uses image recognition technology and computer learning to determine if the card being uploaded meets the visual specifications of a government-issued CDC card,” said Lisaius, a former deputy press secretary in the George W. Bush White House. He left unanswered whether the Clear app will deny a badge to anyone not fully vaccinated at least 14 days out. CES is using Clear’s Health Pass “for free, safe and frictionless entry to the event,” said Lisaius. Only people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 "will be able to participate in-person in Las Vegas," say the CES 2022 protocols. The only exceptions are for convention staff and freight company employees who work the show venues during off-peak and overnight hours, they say. “We have requested that all convention staff during show days and hours show proof of vaccination.”

The COVID-19 pandemic set “a new watermark” in the number of PCs per household, Matt Baker, Dell Technologies senior vice president-corporate strategy, told the Raymond James technology investor conference Monday. What was one or two PCs per household before COVID-19 is “now one or two per person,” he said. “The pandemic has reinforced the PC as the prime productivity platform.” The world was saying “the PC was dead when they saw phones and tablets, but we all know that it's no fun working on a phone or a tablet,” he said. If there's any “silver lining” to the pandemic, it’s that the health crisis “placed our business on the critical path for everybody's lives,” he said.

The safety of CES 2020 “participants and partners” is a “top priority,” emailed an association spokesperson Thursday, responding to our queries about the possible impact of COVID-19's new omicron variant on the Jan. 5-8 event planned for the Las Vegas Convention Center. “We are actively tracking the emerging news and science,” she said. CTA continues to “follow guidance” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, “as well as relevant federal, state, and local government requirements,” she said. "While it is too early to determine the impact of this latest variant, we will continue to monitor and adjust our plans and health protocols as necessary."

The U.S. needs to work with global trading allies to find long-term fixes to the supply chain crisis that will transcend future American administrations, Matt Murray, senior bureau official in the State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, told the Global Trade and Innovation Policy Alliance summit in a keynote Thursday. “We can’t just look at supply chain issues and say we need to fix it by Christmas because there are these short-term disruptions,” he said.

CTA has no “new information at this time” about FCC and FTC participation at CES 2022 “but will follow up as participation is confirmed,” emailed a spokesperson Monday. CES 2020 drew a large contingent of FCC and FTC members, including the chairs of both agencies (see 2001070054). No FCC or FTC people were among the show’s list of featured speakers as of Monday. CES 2022 opens Jan. 5 for a four-day run at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and will be “a little bit smaller” in attendee and exhibitor participation than before the COVID-19 pandemic, CTA President Gary Shapiro told a Nov. 18 media briefing (see 2111180040).