Paul Gluckman

5G was built into two-thirds of AMOLED smartphones shipped in Q4 and 47% in all of 2020, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. Q3 AMOLED smartphone panel shipments fell year over year for the second straight quarter due to weakened demand from the pandemic and delays in Apple’s iPhone 12 launch, said DSCC. But Q4 was expected to have been a record quarter for AMOLED smartphone panels by “wide margins,” it said. Apple’s all-OLED launch in the flagship iPhone 12 lineup was responsible for most of the Q4 upswing in AMOLED smartphone panel shipments, said DSCC.

A “broader set of video decoding standards” to promote the “wider availability” of 8K streaming content highlights the “updated performance specification” an 8K TV must meet to qualify for the 8K Association’s certification logo, said the group Monday. Samsung, which has downplayed its role as the 8KA’s brainchild, posted the announcement on its own website. The updated spec also requires that 8K TVs “enable access to advanced multi-dimensional surround sound formats,” said 8KA. In keeping with past 8KA practice, only group members are privy to the specifics about the updated certification criteria, emailed Executive Director Chris Chinnock: “We left it intentionally vague as it is still a members-only document but wanted to advise that we continue to add features and try to raise the bar each year a little bit.”

New Samsung QLED TVs launching globally in 2021 will support a new "HDR10+ Adaptive" feature that adjusts picture quality to ambient room light, said the manufacturer Wednesday. “HDR10+ Adaptive supports Filmmaker Mode and adapts to brighter rooms so customers can enjoy a true cinematic experience with HDR10+ movies and television programs in any environment at home,” said Samsung, developer of the HDR10+ dynamic-metadata technology. It’s unclear what the company meant in suggesting HDR10+ Adaptive supports Filmmaker Mode, the independent TV picture setting hatched by the UHD Alliance in summer 2019 for rendering better movie watching in the living room as creators intended it. Filmmaker Mode works mostly through automatic metadata detection in a TV to deactivate motion smoothing and other processing optimized for live sports when the set senses that the content being rendered is a movie or episodic TV show. It’s also available on TVs from LG and Vizio that support Dolby Vision. “With HDR10+ and Filmmaker mode, Prime Video content is optimized regardless of the viewing environment and customers can enjoy movies and TV shows the way the filmmakers intended,” said BA Winston, Amazon Prime Video global head-video playback and delivery. It was Amazon’s most explicit known endorsement of Filmmaker Mode, after fleeting references on a Sept. 30 UHD Alliance webinar that Prime Video will launch the feature "on select players next year.” Samsung touted Amazon Prime Video support for HDR10+ for years, evidenced by the many hours of content available on the service embedded with Samsung's preferred HDR technology. Samsung critics countered that Amazon Prime Video's HDR10+ hasn't been well-publicized.

Despite the persistent spike in new COVID-19 cases in much of the U.S., and vaccine availability still unknown, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority lists 23 physical trade shows on the 2021 calendar for the Las Vegas Convention Center, though none before late March. The shows mainly are small, except for the NAB Show, which occupies LVCC Oct. 10-13, about six months later than its usual April run. Not all organizers think it’s safe to return to a physical show at the LVCC so early in 2021. The International Wireless Communications Expo scrapped its customary March dates in favor of a Sept. 27-30 engagement at the LVCC. “We've been watching the world evolve since March 2020, and though we hoped we'd be in a safe position to reunite in person in Las Vegas for IWCE by March 2021, it's apparent that the world isn't quite there yet,” said organizers. LVCVA lists 19 confirmed shows on the LVCC’s 2022 calendar, with CES 2022 the year’s first booking Jan. 5-8.

Jay Winegard, the legally deaf Queens, New York, resident responsible for filing dozens of Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuits against various enterprises since July 2019, is now targeting CTA in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn with his first known ADA complaint against a trade association. All of Winegard's suits allege inaccessibility to online content through lack of closed captioning or other assistive measures violates the ADA rights of those with hearing disabilities. CTA “excludes the deaf and hard of hearing” from “full and equal participation” in its CES website, CES.tech, in breach of the 1990 statute, said the Christmas Day complaint (in Pacer). Like all of Winegard’s lawsuits, it seeks class-action status on behalf of all people in the U.S. with hearing disabilities. “Without closed captioning deaf and hard-of-hearing people cannot enjoy video content” on CES.tech “while the general public can,” it said. CES.tech qualifies as a “place of public accommodation” that “denies equal access” to the deaf and hearing-impaired under the scope and meaning of the ADA, it said. CTA didn't comment Monday.

“Save $350 when you register for the all-digital #CES2021 by Jan. 3,” tweeted CTA Wednesday. “Get a front row seat to the latest innovations without ever leaving home.” The $149 CES 2021 registration fee for most attendees rises to $499 starting Jan. 4. CTA said it posted the escalated price to encourage CES attendees to register early because it needs time to qualify applicants as legitimate trade visitors. Late registrations have been an unwanted practice common to virtual trade shows and conferences during the COVID-19 pandemic, said CTA President Gary Shapiro (see 2012170058).

The U.S. Court of International Trade granted DOJ’s second motion requesting leave to file an updated “schedule of cases” related to the first-filed HMTX Industries-Jasco Products Section 301 complaint, said Chief Judge Timothy Stanceu's order (in Pacer) Tuesday in docket 1:20-cv-00177. The motion “concerns overall case management of an unusually large volume of cases, none of which have yet been assigned to an individual Judge,” said DOJ's Tuesday motion. Roughly 3,700 cases have inundated the court, all seeking to vacate the Lists 3 and 4A tariff rulemakings on Chinese imports and refund the duties. The plaintiffs who responded to DOJ’s Sept. 23 motion (in Pacer) for case management procedures have “generally agreed” the cases other than the HMTX-Jasco action “should be stayed while a test-case procedure is implemented,” said DOJ. The revised schedule of pending cases (in Pacer) attached to the motion spans 194 pages and includes actions filed through Monday. Cases have continued trickling, at least one a day. All assert timeliness under the court’s two-year statute of limitations, dating to first payment of the List 3 tariffs upon the entry of goods in 2018.

Disney emailed Hulu ad-free subscribers Friday who pay $11.99 monthly for the service with an offer they couldn’t refuse -- adding ESPN+ for only a penny more a month. An apologetic “correction” email followed 24 hours later explaining that the Friday offer “was sent in error” and was meant for “eligible subscribers who have both Hulu and Disney+, and might be interested in adding ESPN+ to upgrade to The Disney Bundle.” Hulu-only subscribers “are not eligible” for the ESPN+ upgrade offer, said the correction, inviting them to "learn more" about how they could sign on for the three-service bundle directly through their Hulu accounts. We queried Disney for comment on how many Hulu subscribers got the errant offer and whether Friday’s outreach was an attempt all along to coax Hulu-only customers to upgrade to the bundle. It didn’t respond.

The impact of the U.S. iPhone 12 launch was evident in the Census Bureau’s smartphone import data trends for October, as accessed through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb tool. Apple’s Oct. 23 release of its first 5G-enabled flagship phone helped send October smartphone unit and dollar import volume soaring. The average October smartphone import was more than a third costlier than in September, though all metrics were noticeably lower than those of a year earlier, as 2020 has been a trying year for the category. U.S. importers sourced 17.49 million smartphones from all countries in October, up 17.2% from September but down 22.5% from October 2019, said DataWeb. October dollar imports spiked 59.3% over September's to $5.21 billion but were 24.1% lower than a year earlier. October smartphone imports were worth $298.43 on average, 36.3% higher than in September but 1.9% below the October 2019 average. China was the obvious beneficiary of the October smartphone import surge, with 83% share of all handsets shipped here in the month, compared with only 70.7% share in September, said DataWeb. Apple is known to be sourcing the iPhone 12 from Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory in China's Henan province. The company, notoriously protective of its proprietary sourcing information, didn’t respond to questions. U.S. importers sourced 14.51 million smartphones from China in October, 37.5% more than in September but 19.1% fewer than in October 2019, said DataWeb. The 104.15 million Chinese smartphones shipped here in the first 10 months were 73.4% of all handset imports to the U.S., slightly lower than its 74.3% share in the same 2019 period. China’s October smartphone import spike took a clear toll on Vietnam, which contributed 13.8% of all handset shipments to the U.S. in the month, down from its 23.9% share in September, said DataWeb. Vietnamese unit import volume of 2.41 million smartphones declined 32.3% from September and was down 35.9% from October 2019. Vietnam shipped just under 29 million smartphones to the U.S. in the year’s first 10 months, 20.4% of all handset imports to the U.S. in the January-to-October period, said DataWeb. The country’s significant stature in the smartphone category will bear watching as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative convenes a Section 301 investigative hearing Dec. 29 into allegations of Vietnamese currency manipulation to the detriment of U.S. commercial interests. The threat of possible tariffs on Vietnamese imports looms prominently over the proceeding. Smartphones from China technically remain exposed to the threat of List 4B Section 301 tariffs still on the books, but the Trump administration postponed the List 4B duties indefinitely after reaching the phase one trade deal with China nearly a year ago (see 2001160022).

Picking a vendor to run the digital platform of the virtual CES 2021, culminating in the October choice of Microsoft (see 2010190043), started with about 60 contenders, CTA President Gary Shapiro told us last week. Among the factors, “we went with Microsoft because they had done their own event,” he said of the Microsoft Ignite all-digital conference that debuted Sept. 22. “We actually signed up and watched it” as part of the evaluation, he said. “Microsoft had so many things we wanted, including a production studio, and they obviously know how to do cybersecurity,” said Shapiro. “There was a lot of chemistry.” The deal includes "things they hadn’t done before” such as show registrations and other CES-centric activities, Shapiro said. “There are other companies that were brought in as subcontractors. It’s a pretty complicated relationship.” Shapiro traveled earlier in December to Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters to do “production work,” he said. “Essentially, we’ve gone from producing a physical event to producing a number of TV shows. It’s totally different for us.” CTA is “able to do things” in the digital domain it never would have considered before, including changing the CES show dates six months out, he said, laughing. CTA originally planned to do the virtual show on the same Jan. 6-10 dates as the canceled physical Las Vegas show before moving to Jan. 11-14.