Smartphone shipments will increase 4% to 161 million units this year, for $73 billion, a 5% dollar-value increase after a year of “slight declines,” CTA reported Monday. Over 67 million 5G smartphones are expected to ship, with 298% growth over last year as the technology continues to build out. 5G revenue is projected at $39 billion, up 218%, as consumer awareness grows and network coverage expands. U.S. retail tech industry sales revenue will reach $461 billion in 2021, up 4.3%, CTA said, noting the pandemic will continue to keep Americans at home using tech to stay connected and entertained. “While the road to a full economic recovery is long and intertwined with a complex vaccine rollout, the tech industry’s ability to meet the moment during this crisis has been critical,” said CTA CEO Gary Shapiro. Spending on streaming services and software is projected to grow 11%, to $112 billion, after 2019-20 growth of 31%. Exclusive content and cord cutting are driving households to take on multiple subscriptions. Video spending is seen rising 15% to $41 billion in 2021, and audio revenue for the year is estimated at $10 billion, rising 19% from last year. In gaming, spending on videogame software is projected to reach $47 billion in 2021, up 8%.
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
Micron Technology expects 5G smartphone unit sales to double in 2021 to around 500 million handsets globally, said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on a quarterly call Thursday. Mobile demand “remains strong as 5G momentum increases and the mobile market recovers from the impact of the pandemic,” said Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner.
LG Electronics is “very pleased” with its NextGenTV launch, said John Taylor, senior vice president-communications and public affairs. “It was not what we anticipated a year ago at CES 2020, but kudos to the broadcasters for keeping the foot on the accelerator” to roll out 3.0 services to 20 markets in 2020, despite the pandemic, he told a Pearl TV NextGenTV media briefing virtually Thursday. LG plans a broad assortment of 3.0 TVs for 2021 in screen sizes from 55 to 88 inches, he said. “We expect more from the industry, too. We know we’re not going to build this market alone.” LG expects “many more models from more manufacturers as the stars align in 2021 with the majority of Americans being able to receive the NextGenTV.” BitRouter is entering the market with its ZapperBox set-top (see 2101070063).
BitRouter is entering the ATSC 3.0 consumer market with its ZapperBox set-top box, President-Founder Gopal Miglani told a Pearl TV NextGenTV media briefing virtually Thursday. The company plans a “slow ramp-up” to be sure “everything’s working” and “consumers are happy,” said Miglani. BitRouter also will sell the ZapperBox through resellers and will approach OEMs “who want to white-label the product,” he said. It also will license the software to OEMs that want to design their own boxes, he said. LG expects more 3.0 rollout this year (see 2101070061).
Pandemic lifestyles enabled consumer tech to generate $14 billion in “additional revenue” in 2020 compared with 2019, said Stephen Baker, NPD vice president-industry adviser, technology, told the virtual Techfluence conference. Big 2020 winners were do-it-yourself PCs, monitors, gaming, PC headsets and home networking equipment, he said Wednesday. Smart home, headphones and wireless power underperformed, he said. “Tech was in the right place at the right time” for lockdown orders, said Baker. It's “a mostly recessionary-proof business.” NPD thinks the consumer tech industry “will continue to see strong volumes for the next three years, regardless of the economic conditions,” he said. NPD estimates the industry finished Q4 with a 14% increase over the 2019 quarter, somewhat of a “slowdown” from Q2 and Q3, when stay-at-home restrictions peaked, said Baker: But the $14 billion in additional industry revenue in 2020 meant “certainly a historic year.”
ATSC scheduled live virtual workshops for Tuesday, coinciding with the all-digital CES 2021 but after the show's main activities are “done for the day,” emailed a spokesperson. ATSC President Madeleine Noland moderates the first panel, “ATSC 3.0 at the Consumer’s Fingertips,” at 7 p.m. EST. Panelists are Steve Koenig, CTA vice president-research; Mark Aitken, Sinclair senior vice president-advanced technology; Alfred Chan, MediaTek vice president-TV and smart home business unit; Nick Kelsey, SiliconDust chief technical officer; and John Taylor, LG Electronics senior vice president-public affairs and communications. An 8 p.m. EST webinar on remote learning is to be moderated by Jerry Whitaker, ATSC vice president-standards development. His panelists are Lonna Thompson, America's Public Television Stations general counsel; Todd Achilles, Evoca CEO; Fred Engel, UNC-TV Public Media North Carolina chief technology officer; and Aby Alexander, Thomson Broadcast president-Americas. Koenig plans to provide some details on NextGenTV sales forecasts, the spokesperson said.
Deny the patent infringement investigation SkyBell and EyeTalk365 seek on video doorbells and IP cameras from Vivint, SimpliSafe and Arlo Technologies because the seven communications and monitoring systems patents are “invalid,” commented SimpliSafe and Arlo (login required) in International Trade Commission docket 337-3517. Tuesday was the deadline for comments. Two of the three proposed respondents argued for the case to be thrown out or decided expeditiously. No Vivint filing was posted Wednesday. The complainants didn’t respond to questions.
Vivint Smart Home agreed to pay $3.2 million to settle allegations that its sales reps deceived federally insured lenders into approving financing for customers’ buys of Vivint’s home monitoring products, violating the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act, said DOJ Wednesday. The government contended that Vivint reps used personal funds from 2017-20 to cover initial financing payments for customers who sought financing to buy Vivint’s products. The reps made false and misleading statements to lenders about creditworthiness of the Vivint customers to make it appear that they, not the reps, made the initial payments. The company is “pleased to have reached this resolution related to certain past sales practices by some of our sales representatives," emailed a spokesperson. "In addition to cooperating with the DOJ, we have addressed the issues and continue to strengthen our compliance policies, practices and procedures.”
CTA quietly listed Microsoft President Brad Smith as a CES 2021 keynoter on the virtual event’s schedule, but his appearance is “not part of our larger contractual agreement” with Microsoft, emailed an association spokesperson Monday. CTA previously resisted saying whether Microsoft’s “cloud platform provider” contract terms to run CES 2021 as a virtual event included an agreement for Microsoft to keynote the show (see 2010190043). Smith’s prerecorded keynote on “The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age” is scheduled to begin streaming Jan. 13 at 9 a.m. EST. Smith will examine “the dual use of technology” as an “extraordinary tool that powers economies” but also a “formidable weapon that can undermine democracy and fundamental human rights,” says a conference description.
Ericsson owns a “valuable portfolio” of patents used globally in cellular handsets, tablets, TVs and “many other electrical devices,” and a wide variety of Samsung smart TVs and smartphones, including the new Galaxy S20+5G flagship phone, infringe four of them, alleged a New Year’s Day complaint (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas. The oldest of the asserted patents (6,879,849) dates to April 2005 and describes an “in-built antenna” for mobile communications devices. The Galaxy S20+5G includes an “antenna pattern” formed of conductive metal located on a “specified planar surface” of a main printed circuit board, next to the phone’s millimeter-wave 5G circuitry, in violation of the patent, said Ericsson. The most recent patent (9,313,178) was granted in April 2016 for a method and system for securing over-the-top live video delivery. Samsung smart TVs and smartphones that support Google’s Widevine digital rights management system “perform the step of detecting content encryption key rotation boundaries between periods of use of different content encryption keys in decrypting retrieved content,” said the complaint. The manner in which the products do so violates the patent, it said. Ericsson seeks a judgment that Samsung’s infringement is “willful,” plus punitive and compensatory damages “in no event less than a reasonable royalty,” it said. Samsung didn’t respond to questions Monday.