American Express expects consumer travel “will come back” after the COVID-19 pandemic, Doug Buckminster, head-global consumer services, told an Autonomous Research virtual conference Thursday. “That's our enterprise position.” The “rebound” AmEx is seeing in consumer travel and entertainment is “an effect of substitution,” people substituting driving vacations and “home-stay rentals” for air travel, he said. Expansion of outdoor dining, plus pickup and delivery, “has bounced the restaurant category, more than you would expect just from dine-in volumes alone,” he said. Buckminster expects a vaccine “will unleash a lot of anticipatory and pent-up demand” in consumer travel and entertainment, though “getting back historic volumes is going to require time,” he said. “There's no question that T&E volume is taking a disproportionate hit.”
Comments are due Sept. 24 at the International Trade Commission on the public interest ramifications of an import ban DivX seeks on LG, Samsung and TCL smart TVs, said Wednesday’s Federal Register. DivX’s Sept. 10 complaint (login required) in docket 337-3489 seeks a Tariff Act Section 337 investigation into allegations the video processors in the TVs infringe four DivX patents on adaptive bitrate streaming. Component suppliers MediaTek, MStar and Realtek are also named as potential respondents. DivX was “one of the first companies to enable successful delivery of high-quality digital video over the internet,” said the complaint: No harm would come to the public if the TVs were excluded because other manufacturers could easily fill the void. Respondents didn't comment.
COVID-19 is vastly accelerating the growth of e-commerce, said Brie Carere, FedEx chief marketing and communications officer, on a fiscal Q1 investor call Tuesday evening. Pre-pandemic, FedEx projected the U.S. would surpass 100 million daily packages by 2026, she said. “We now project that the U.S. domestic parcel market will hit this mark by calendar year 2023, pulling volume projections forward by three years.” E-commerce activity “remains elevated,” though it has declined as a share of total retail from its “apex” in April, said Carere. FedEx is “working hard to set expectations with our e-commerce merchants” for the holiday selling season, she said. “I think they are very well aware that this is going to be a peak like no other.” The stock closed 5.8% higher Wednesday at $250.30.
The need for U.S. leadership on “pragmatic tech-savvy policy” toward China “has never been greater,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told a National Democratic Institute webinar Wednesday. “We need help from the private sector to support our technological leadership and national defense, and hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable” for bad trade behavior and human rights abuses, he said.
Work from home, remote learning and telemedicine are PCs' “core growth demand drivers” during the pandemic, Kevin Frost, general manager of HP’s consumer business, told a Deutsche Bank virtual conference Monday. “We see them absolutely extending” into 2021, he said of demand. HP estimates an installed base of 700 million PCs globally older than four years, said Frost. “This new world that we live in now” is speeding the “refresh cycle” of the devices because people “are needing to do things that are just harder to do” on older machines, whether it's holding Zoom meetings, streaming video or gaming, he said. It’s a myth that consumer PC demand is shifting toward the low end during pandemic buying, said Frost. Shifting consumers toward mobile gaming is “the single biggest thing we're doing,” he said. The supply constraints in laptop CPUs and display panels is “industry-wide,” said Frost. “We didn't expect demand to be this strong.” The supply shortage “is really a demand issue,” he said. CPUs and panels are “long-lead-time components,” he said. HP is experiencing “spot shortages” on processors and panels “across the board,” he said. The shortages are “broad, but I'm confident we're improving every day,” he said.
The COVID-19 pandemic impeded the 8K ecosystem’s progress by “up to a year,” estimated 8K Association Executive Director Chris Chinnock on an association webinar Tuesday. Events are being held virtually, so there’s “not as much exposure," he said: “High-profile sporting events are kind of what raise the value of 8K to consumers and professionals,” yet the 8K-centric 2020 Tokyo Olympics were canceled. Deploying 8K streaming services will be key to bringing the technology to mass scale, as it was for 4K, said Chinnock, acknowledging that “bigger players” in the over-the-top space won’t launch 8K service offerings for at least two to three years. The brainchild of Samsung, the group has been unable to sign 8K TV rivals LG and Sony as members. 8KA is starting to see smaller OTT services launch 8K offerings, including in Europe, said Chinnock.
Administrative Law Judge Dee Lord with the International Trade Commission is “not inclined” to sever into two probes the ITC's Tariff Act Section 337 investigation into allegations that Lenovo computers, tablets and parts infringe five Nokia patents, she told a Sept. 3 telephonic conference, per a transcript (login required) posted Monday in docket 337-TA-1208. Lee ordered the parties Aug. 14 to show cause why the “disparate” issues between four H.264 patents and the remaining invention didn’t warrant severance (see 2008160004). Nokia and ITC staff argued in their Aug. 26 replies there was substantial overlap between the bodies of intellectual property (see 2008270001), and Lord agreed, according to the transcript. “On balance, it seemed to me that we ought to keep everything in one place,” she said.
July smartphone imports of 18.2 million to the U.S. was their highest monthly volume of 2020 but remain on pace to finish the year with 20% fewer shipments than 2019, according to Census Bureau data we accessed Sunday through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb. Unit imports were up 15% sequentially and 6.2% from July 2019. That's improvement from Q2 (see 2008160001). The average July smartphone import was priced at $244.68, up 6.3% from June and 6.9% year on year. China generated 75% of July smartphone imports. PC monitors, a connectivity tool throughout much of telework and remote-learning mandates, cooled off from their torrid Q2 performance.
E-commerce reached a “tipping point" during the pandemic, based on “fundamental shifts in consumer behavior,” PayPal Chief Financial Officer John Rainey told a virtual Deutsche Bank conference Monday. “In areas where some of the shelter-in-place or social distancing measures have been relaxed, we're still seeing much more elevated levels of e-commerce activity.” The single largest demographic of new PayPal users is “silver tech,” people older than 50 coming to e-commerce for the first time, he said. “When people are lacking mobility and the ability to go purchase something in a physical setting, we're going to see heightened levels of e-commerce trends,” said Rainey. “What follows is new customers.”
Google device “redesigns” built without the embedded source code that Sonos alleges infringe its multiroom audio patents are “hypothetical,” not real, and should be struck from the International Trade Commission’s Tariff Act Section 337 investigation into the allegations (see 2002060070), said a Sonos brief (login required) in support of the motion to strike posted Thursday in docket 337-TA-1191. Google misrepresented that the redesigns were “fixed and definite” when it told Chief Administrative Law Judge Charles Bullock it made the redesigns available to Sonos for inspection, said Sonos. “Google refuses to produce the alleged redesigns to Sonos for Sonos to test and is only willing to provide a limited demonstration of certain functions under the supervision of a Google attorney,” it said. “Such testing is necessary to determine whether or not the supposed redesigns actually removed the infringing code.” That Sonos was deprived of the opportunity to test the redesigns “directly contradicts” Google’s argument that the revised source code is embedded in physical working products that Google made available for inspection, said Sonos. Google didn’t comment Friday.