Paul Gluckman

BlackBerry is making “significant progress” in negotiations to sell the portion of its patent portfolio involving mobile devices, messaging and wireless networking -- “areas of business that we are no longer actively involved with,” said CEO John Chen on a call Wednesday for fiscal Q2 ended Aug. 31. BlackBerry and the potential buyer reached preliminary agreement on “many of the key terms,” he said. “We expect to execute a definitive agreement this quarter.” Q2 licensing revenue was only $15 million because patent “monetization activities remain limited while negotiations for the potential sale continue,” said Chief Financial Officer Steve Rai. Neither he nor Chen identified the possible buyer. BlackBerry made the decision five years ago to exit handset development and manufacturing in favor of a royalty-bearing model that licenses the brand and intellectual property to other smartphone makers (see 1609280006). The stock closed 11% higher Thursday at $10.60.

Comments are due Nov. 8 at the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security in docket BIS-2021-0036 to help the secretaries of Commerce and Homeland Security prepare a report to the White House on the global semiconductor shortage by the one-year deadline of President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order on America's supply chains, says Friday’s Federal Register. BIS put out a separate call for comments this week due Nov. 4 on supply chain disruptions in the broader information and communications technology sector, also under the Feb. 24 EO (see 2109170042).

ViacomCBS is “spending a lot of time on release strategy” for its feature films, and “really testing different models to maximize the value of that film slate in this evolving landscape, particularly in this COVID-ruled space,” CEO Bob Bakish told a virtual Goldman Sachs conference Wednesday. Paramount’s animated feature, PAW Patrol: The Movie, was its first released simultaneously in theaters and on Paramount+ when it debuted Aug. 20, he said. “That's actually a very good model for kids’ and family films” in this “COVID-impacted time,” he said. “It gives consumers optionality to view the product where they feel the most comfortable, and we did a bunch of research on that.” The film “did very well” theatrically and was a “significant driver” for Paramount+, “where it's actually now one of the most watched originals,” he said. ViacomCBS prefers a 45-day theatrical window for the “bigger films,” because that's the “sweet spot of driving theatrical revenue and streaming growth in general,” said Bakish. The “range of tactics” is designed to “maximize the value of film across this now-broader ecosystem," he said. "But theatrical definitely still matters.”

Disney “called it exactly right” when it shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic last year to the three-pronged strategy of releasing some feature films direct to theaters, others exclusively through Disney+, and still others as a hybrid Premier Access option through theaters and on Disney+ streaming, CEO Bob Chapek told a Goldman Sachs conference virtually Tuesday. Amid the market's "vast uncertainties," deciding which film goes to which channel is akin to working a stick shift, he said. The three-pronged distribution approach has “locked in” some “flexibility,” said Chapek. “We love theatrical exhibition. We’ve seen the power of that the last several decades.” But direct-to-consumer streaming is “strategically the most important thing our company is doing,” he said. The studio has a slate of upcoming movies conducive to “very short” theatrical exhibition “windows,” said Chapek, citing Encanto, the animated musical debuting Nov. 24 in theaters and 30 days later on Disney+. Its “relatively short theatrical window” will capture “99.9% of the viewers that would go see that movie anyway,” and create a buzz for those who want to watch it a month later on Disney+, he said. The media company is interested in sports betting, as are its partner sports leagues, the CEO said. In-game wagering is “definitely a place we want to be,” said Chapek. “It’s not something we would do necessarily solo in the gambling area, but we believe that our brands have the degrees of freedom to enable us to expand our presence there, and I think you’re starting to see us take some pretty big steps along that way.”

Well-organized, well-funded cyber adversaries “are becoming harder to detect, as they take advantage of the latest technologies to hide in the shadows,” said Cognyte Software CEO Elad Sharon on a call Monday for fiscal Q2 ended July 31. The company markets an “open analytics” security platform. There’s a growing volume and diversity of “structured and unstructured data” for bad actors to attack, said Sharon. Data is being “augmented and spread across organizational silos, making investigations more difficult,” he said. “Many customers recognize that homegrown solutions can no longer keep pace with these evolving security challenges.” Cybercriminals are attacking more frequently, with methods “becoming more and more sophisticated, making verifying bad actors much more difficult,” said the CEO.

The delta variant appears to be having a “significant impact” on anticipated consumer shopping behaviors before the holiday season, a Pitney Bowes survey found. The company canvassed a nationally representative sample of 2,000 U.S. consumers in the past month, finding one in three plans to shop more online compared with now, it said Tuesday. That’s a 19-point increase from May. Online was consumers’ “favorite holiday shopping destination” a year ago, said Gregg Zegras, president-global e-commerce. “Consumers are defaulting back to their new comfort zone.”

CES 2022 organizers are “still moving ahead” with the Jan. 5-8 in-person show at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), emailed a spokesperson Thursday in reply to our queries about the fate of the event after surges in COVID-19's delta variant forced the cancellation of the Oct. 9-13 NAB Show 2021 at the same venue (see 2109150064 or 2109150062).

Innovators like Sonos “should be able to trust the courts” to protect their intellectual property from companies like Google “that attempt to free-ride” off its “high-quality engineering and hard work,” six Grammy- and Oscar-winning sound engineers and producers told the International Trade Commission Monday in docket 337-TA-1191 (login required). Google violated Section 337 of the 1930 Tariff Act for importing smart speakers and other devices found to infringe five Sonos multiroom audio patents, said a notice of initial determination (ID) signed Aug. 13 by ITC Chief Administrative Law Judge Charles Bullock (see 2108130080). A final ITC determination on Bullock’s recommended import ban of the infringing Google products is due mid-December. Google and Sonos filed petitions for review of Bullock’s decision, with Google alleging the infringement findings were “predicated on misunderstandings of the plain meaning” of the patents, and Sonos arguing the ID could permit Google to “continue importing every single product by making trivial software changes” in the accused goods. Prominent engineers and producers Tom Elmhirst, Nigel Godrich, Noah Goldstein, Chris Jenkins, Emily Lazar and Manny Marroquin “have collectively been working with Sonos to tune its speakers for over five years,” they said. “During our collaboration we have observed Sonos continually pushing the boundaries of home audio and leading in the space,” they said. “Sonos invented multi-room wireless audio, and we appreciate how Sonos listens to our feedback and incorporates it into their products. This is unusual for tech companies, which typically prefer to ‘engineer’ everything in-house, without asking creative professionals like us for our input.”

July smartphone imports fell 15% from a year earlier, to 15.5 million, per Census Bureau data we accessed Monday through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb portal. The average handset was $281.39, a 15% increase. South Korea produced 2.7% of the total, with its 431,000 handsets up 127%. It had the most expensive smartphone imports to the U.S. at $639.34 on average. That's nearly 2.5 times more expensive than China, which ranks No. 1 in sending such phones to America.

The Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry took a hard line on a letter that 13 House Commerce Committee Republicans sent Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Thursday seeking DOT information on reports that U.S. officials approved licensing applications for Huawei to buy U.S. semiconductors for China’s next-generation autonomous vehicles. The GOP members asked Buttigieg to respond by Sept. 23 to a dozen questions about the reports, including whether he’s concerned that Huawei is looking for a U.S. “foothold” to steal information on Americans and gather intelligence on the U.S. “transportation infrastructure.” The 13 “thieving” U.S. politicians “have the nerve to call others thieves,” responded the ministry spokesperson Friday. “When it comes to stealing and gathering information, the U.S. is the true world champion.” Huawei has “openly announced” to the world “its readiness to sign no-backdoor agreements and to launch cybersecurity assessment centers in any country to receive external testing,” he said. “I wonder if U.S. companies dare to do the same.” DOT didn’t respond to questions.