Paul Gluckman

NAB Show 2021 lost another anchor exhibitor when Panasonic announced Friday that “the current conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic” forced its decision “not to attend the event in Las Vegas” scheduled for Oct. 9-13. “In place of participating in-person, we’re planning to meet and connect with our valued customers via our digital platforms where we look forward to sharing our exciting announcements,” said Carter Hoskins, director-professional imaging, in a statement emailed to Panasonic accounts. “We are confident a digital experience will be effective, similar to events we’ve hosted over the last 18 months.” The NAB Show "is an economic engine for our industry, and we look forward to delivering a productive in-person experience," emailed an association spokesperson. "We have taken important steps to prioritize the safety of our community and are excited to host the many exhibiting companies ready to meet with buyers and get back to business in Las Vegas." The show's website early Friday still showed Panasonic holding an Oct. 10 in-person exhibitor news conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center before the listing was removed later in the day.

No single company or country can “effectively produce semiconductors,” said Semiconductor Industry Association CEO John Neuffer on a Center for Strategic and International Studies webinar Wednesday about opportunities for U.S.-South Korea collaboration to bolster global supply chain resilience. “For better or for worse, and by far for better,” semiconductors are a “global business with global supply chains, and the last thing we should be doing is putting up barriers to innovation in our policies,” he said. East Asia produces “the most sophisticated, the most advanced semiconductors” in nodes below 10 nanometers, said Neuffer. Taiwan produces 92% of those devices, South Korea the rest, he said: “Do we want to put up barriers to that kind of innovation as we’re going forward with our manufacturing incentives or our other policies? No, I don’t think we do.” It’s not the goal of the U.S. semiconductor industry to “onshore everything,” said Neuffer. “We’re trying to diversify our supply chains and spread out our risk.” The industry doesn’t want to “create an environment” that encourages “important players like Samsung” -- a “massive’ U.S. investor -- to stay “offshore,” he said. “We want to bring the innovation onshore. That creates more competition here and helps us ensure that U.S.-headquartered companies again take the lead when it comes to the most advanced chips.” Samsung didn’t respond Thursday to requests for comment.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan stood somewhat apart from other chipmakers when he expressed guarded optimism on a call Thursday for fiscal Q3 ended Aug. 1 that his company’s supply will meet demand into 2022. Broadcom has “a pretty good supply availability lineup for 2022, and we feel pretty OK about that,” said Tan. “I won't say great, but in this environment, all things considered, we're feeling quite good.” Tan wouldn’t bite when asked about industry speculation that Broadcom’s top wafer supplier, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., would soon impose substantial price increases. TSMC didn't comment Friday. Q3 Broadcom revenue of $910 million in fiscal Q3 grew 23% year on year, fueled mainly by the “2X growth” in Wi-Fi 6E deployments, plus double-digit increases in “next-generation fiber,” said Tan. “We see service providers like AT&T, British Telecom, and even Deutsche Telekom, deploying in increasing volumes next-generation last-mile fiber connectivity to homes in the U.S. and globally.”

Apple is seeking the dismissal of a May 17 complaint asking class-action status that alleged the iPhone maker harms developers through anti-competitive behavior and monopolistic practices in running the App Store in violation of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, said a motion (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Plaintiff Primary Productions was “unhappy that a cryptocurrency app it had some role in developing was allegedly rejected from the App Store,” and alleges a series of “sweeping” antitrust and contract claims against Apple, said the motion. “But Apple has no obligation, under the antitrust laws or otherwise, to approve and distribute on its own platform apps that it has determined are inconsistent with Apple’s Guidelines.” It called the claims “meritless,” saying the plaintiff “has plausibly pleaded neither relevant antitrust markets nor cognizable antitrust injuries” to support its allegations. Apple asked for an Oct. 14 hearing before Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley. Lawyers for the plaintiff didn’t respond Friday to requests for comment.

China regards 5G as a “frontier technology” that will “profoundly change the way people work and live and usher in an era where all is interconnected,” said a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Thursday after a government-sponsored World 5G Convention in Beijing. Since 5G came into commercial use in China, 993,000 5G base stations have been built and more than 392 million households “have been connected to 5G terminals,” he said. China is committed here to “openness and win-win results” with other global partners, said the spokesperson. “Businesses from all countries are welcome to take part in China's 5G rollout.” China hopes that “all sides will oppose acts that abuse the national security concept and disrupt and undermine global 5G cooperation,” said the spokesperson.

The cyberthreat environment “remains fierce,” as “inherent vulnerabilities” in widely used operating systems “leave companies of all sizes open to attack and provide a rich feeding ground for sophisticated and novice e-criminals alike,” said CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz on a call Tuesday for fiscal Q2 ended July 31. “The lessons learned from recent attacks emphasize that a breach involves more than just malware.” Companies “overly relying” on malware prevention have the biggest vulnerabilities, he said. More than half of recent threat detections “were not malware-based,” evidence that attackers are “exploiting the proliferation of vulnerabilities and abusing systemic weaknesses,” he said. The early July ransomware attack on Kaseya servers should serve as a “reminder to the far-reaching impact of a supply chain breach and the importance of a zero-trust architecture,” said Kurtz. “Most ransomware outbreaks have a compromised identity component. Shoring up this threat vector is critical to stopping breaches.” A new strategic alliance with Verizon positions the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity platform as part of Verizon's business security portfolio “to provide comprehensive endpoint and workload protection that spans prevention, detection and response capabilities,” he said.

Zoom fiscal Q2 revenue grew 54% year over year to $1.02 billion, in its first “billion-dollar-plus” quarter, said Chief Financial Officer Kelly Steckelberg on a Monday call. “As we’ve just lapped our first full quarter year-over-year compare since the start of the pandemic, we have seen customers return to more thoughtful, measured buying patterns.” Revenue and profitability were strong in the quarter ended July 31, but “other metrics have begun to normalize, especially when compared to the unprecedented year-over-year comps,” she said. Zoom expects its online business “will be a headwind in the coming quarters,” she said. The online sector consists “primarily” of small-business people and individual consumers, many of whom are “socializing in person now,” doing fewer Zoom calls, “and that's where we are starting to see some of the challenges,” she said. Zoom had expected the “slowdown” toward the end of the year, but it “just happened a little bit more quickly than we expected,” she said. The stock closed down 17% Tuesday at $289.50.

Amazon’s proposed $8.45 billion MGM buy (see 2105260061) “is not simply a one-off deal for streaming content,” but the latest move in Amazon’s “overarching strategy to create numerous interconnected points of dominance over businesses and consumers,” nearly three dozen organizations wrote FTC Chair Lina Khan and the other commissioners Tuesday, urging them to block the transaction. If the deal goes through, consumers “will be more forcefully pushed into subscribing” to Amazon Prime Video because more content will be exclusive to the service, “rather than being available across many platforms,” said the groups. Amazon also could “destroy rivals to its Fire TV products by denying other streaming platforms access to its content,” they said. Amazon’s control over the intellectual property for MGM content would allow it to “further exert leverage over its e-commerce platform” by forcing competitors “to prioritize Amazon content and product placement within non-Amazon products in exchange for access to content or IP rights,” they said. “We urge the FTC to halt this deal and to continue to investigate Amazon’s broad abuse of its ecosystem.” An Amazon spokesperson declined comment on the letter. He cited past Amazon statements that competition for content is “already intense,” and that the MGM buy “will help to strengthen this competition and provide even more choice to consumers.”

Responses are due Oct. 27 to revelations by U.S. District Judge William Conley in Madison, Wisconsin, that he owned Apple stock when presiding over Nokia-Apple patent litigation more than a decade ago, said a letter posted Monday in docket 3:10-cv-00249 and signed by Joel Turner, the court’s deputy chief clerk. Conley contacted Turner to tell him the Apple stock ownership was “brought to his attention,” but that it “neither affected nor impacted his decisions in this case,” said the letter. His ownership of Apple shares would have required his immediate recusal under the code of conduct for federal judges, said Turner: "Judge Conley directed that I notify the parties of the conflict." Court records show the litigation before Conley ended in January 2011 when he granted Apple’s motion, over Nokia's opposition, to transfer the case to U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, for convenience and other judicial reasons. Responses by the Oct. 27 deadline “will be considered” by Chief Judge James Peterson without Conley’s “participation,” said Turner. Attempts to reach Nokia and Apple lawyers Monday were unsuccessful. Conley's chambers didn't respond to questions.

An app developer’s May 17 complaint alleging Apple violations of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act by monopolizing the distribution of apps through the App Store was assigned Monday to U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong in Oakland, the third judge to handle the case after the first two recused themselves. Thomas Reilly said he spent $150,000 developing Konverti, a currency exchange app for the remaining petty cash travelers have when returning home from foreign destinations. Konverti was approved and placed in the App Store in June 2017 “and abruptly removed weeks later without clear cause given,” said Reilly’s complaint. “Apple’s anti-competitive conduct forecloses all potential competitors from entering” the app distribution market, facing “no constraints” on its monopoly power, it said. Apple didn’t comment Monday.