Emerald canceled 60 events through Q3 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and some beyond this year, with $197 million in 2019 revenue, said interim CEO Brian Field on a Q2 call Monday. The company postponed 14 events to second-half 2020 that had $8 million in 2019 revenue. Its shows include CEDIA Expo, canceled as a physical show next month in Denver and rescheduled as a virtual show Sept. 15-17 (see 2007090070). Emerald plans to reinstate the Expo as a physical show in September 2021 in Indianapolis. Its $7 million in Q2 revenue compared with $103 million in the 2019 quarter, the result of 20 cancellations, said Chief Financial Officer David Doft. Insurers paid $48.2 million. The show producer owed $45 million in refunds June 30, said Doft. On upcoming conferences, Field noted varying approaches cities and states are taking toward reopening. It’s looking over the next few months to see “where there's still a viable show that can take place safely and working with the local venue management.” Webinars and virtual events “have many of the same features” of live events, including keynotes, awards and virtual booths, said Field, “allowing our exhibitors to load their products and host virtual meetings with buyers.” Customers say this won’t replace the value of in-person shows, he noted: Emerald believes in an emerging hybrid model where virtual components will complement live events “once the medium is safe."
Samsung applied to trademark “Sound Visualizer” for downloadable software that aids TV-viewing for the hearing-impaired, Patent and Trademark Office records last week show. Samsung TVs let consumers pair Bluetooth headphones with TV sound. The company didn’t comment Monday.
The “remote play” and “share play” cloud-gaming features that Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) builds into the PlayStation 4 infringe a June 9 patent (10,681,109) for a display system with a visual server to generate and transmit images to a client, alleged an Intellectual Pixels Limited (IPL) complaint (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California: The three 3DLabs engineers who invented the technology are co-owners of IPL, which holds the patent. “SIE has been seeking to capitalize on the revolutionary technology that IPL and the inventors developed,” it said. “It has already announced its intention to release a new PS5 console that will also utilize IPL’s technology.” IPL's new action came nearly a year to the day after it sued SIE in the same court alleging infringement of four older cloud-gaming patents (see 1907260051). SIE countersued IPL Jan. 21 for a declaratory judgment of noninfringement. The case remains active, but COVID-19 delayed its discovery phase when California went into lockdown in mid-March. SIE didn’t comment Monday.
Trump administration threats to act against Chinese software companies run “counter” to World Trade Organization “principles of openness, fairness, transparency and non-discrimination,” said a Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Monday. “China firmly opposes that.” He urged the U.S. to “stop politicizing economic and trade issues" and practicing "discriminatory" policies "in the name of national security.” The “countless” Chinese software companies doing business in the U.S. are “feeding data directly” to China’s “national security apparatus,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News Sunday: President Donald Trump “will take action in the coming days with respect to a broad array of national security risks that are presented by software connected to the Chinese Communist Party.” TikTok is being eyed by the administration (see 2008030027).
This year's virtual Display Week drew about 200 paid exhibitors, on par with Display Week’s usual draw as a physical event, said Sri Peruvemba, marketing chair for the Society for Information Display, which owns the conference. “SID, pretty much like any organization that has a physical event, relies on that physical event for most of its funding,” Peruvemba told a media briefing Monday via Zoom. “It has been a tremendous challenge this year.” The conference originally was planned as a physical event in June in San Francisco before being moved to August as a physical show in San Jose. Most of the online conference sessions were prerecorded (see 2008030052), but a few have live Q&A, said Peruvemba.
The pandemic spurred “historic” growth in demand for most consumer tech products since March, Stephen Baker, NPD vice president-industry adviser, technology and mobile, told the Display Week virtual conference (see 2008030053) in a prerecorded segment streamed Monday. “We’re seeing broad-based growth in the consumer electronics business,” with most categories “doing fabulously,” he said. Demand is growing “in ways that we’ve never seen,” said Baker. “This is a broad and deep growth opportunity across all of the consumer electronics market.” Amid stay-at-home mandates, “tech is no longer a discretionary spend,” he said. “It really is a necessity. More than many, many general merchandise categories, tech demand leverages its strengths in entertainment, in work from home, in education from home.” The momentum is “likely to provide us with some staying power for technology sales, regardless of what the overall economy looks like over the next few quarters.” The “success of online” now is the “biggest story” in consumer tech, said Baker. “We’re here to tell you that in-store has likely passed its peak.” Price and product are now “much more important than place,” he said. NPD estimates consumer tech retail sales grew 24% in Q2, racking up $5 billion in “incremental” revenue, said Baker. “Four of the five busiest non-holiday weeks NPD has ever tracked” came in Q2, he said. The industry did slightly more than $1.75 billion in sales the third week of March when much of the U.S. went into quarantine, he said. “We thought that was an enormous week that would never be repeated. That was one of the smallest weeks we’ve seen in the last four months.”
Dish Network picked network services provider Tucows as a “technology partner” for its retail wireless business, said the companies Monday. Most U.S. Ting Mobile subscribers became Dish customers Saturday. Tucows positioned Ting for “easy to use services” and “simple value pricing,” said a March 4 annual report. Tucows finished 2019 with 289,000 Ting customers, down from 296,000 in 2018, it said. Dish said the agreement will speed its “digital and operational capabilities in wireless.” Transferring the Ting Mobile subs to Dish frees Tucows to focus on its mobile services enabler business of which Dish becomes the first customer. The Boost acquisition from Sprint thrust Dish “into the retail business in a way we didn’t expect,” said Chairman Charlie Ergen on a recent investor call (see 2005070049).
Liability policy insurers Navigators and Arch are in breach of contract for refusing to cover Vizio’s costs defending itself against dozens of smart TV class-action privacy lawsuits, alleged Vizio in a complaint (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The 29 class actions began in November 2015, alleging the “smart interactivity” feature on Vizio smart TVs violates the Video Privacy Protection Act because it tracks the content viewers are consuming, links the data with their IP addresses and sells the data to marketing companies (see 1512060005). The lawsuits stemmed from Vizio’s July 2015 initial public offering, never consummated, in which it boasted that its Inscape data platform captures smart TV viewing behavior better than any previous service (see 1507260001). The class actions were consolidated into a single case in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, where a judge approved a final settlement agreement in July 2019. The agreement required Vizio to establish a $17 million settlement fund, plus make available prominent on-screen disclosures and opt-out forms about Inscape data collection. Vizio paid $2.2 million in February 2017 to settle similar allegations at the FTC (see 1702060042). Navigators and Arch, using technicalities in their policies, walked away from their “obligations” to cover Vizio for the settlement fund or its “defense costs,” said the Los Angeles complaint. Navigators “disclaimed such an obligation,” while Arch never responded to Vizio’s "notice of claim of defense,” it said. Vizio seeks compensatory and punitive damages, plus a court declaration that the insurers are responsible for their obligations. Navigators and Arch didn’t comment Friday.
Google is under regulatory “scrutiny,” and “we realize, at our scale, that's appropriate,” said CEO Sundar Pichai on a Q2 call Thursday evening. “We've engaged constructively across jurisdictions.” Google “will operate based on the rules,” he said. “The scrutiny is going to be here for a while, and so we are committed to working through it.” Pichai denied in testimony Wednesday his company threatened to delist Yelp (see 2007290063). Consumers’ shift to online during the COVID-19 pandemic is “profound,” said Pichai. “We see people engaging a lot, doing newer things.” Their interests are broadening, he said. Google Meet has been “absolutely critical” during the crisis, he said. “We quickly reengineered it and made it available widely to help millions of other businesses and organizations connect and collaborate.” During the quarter, “we peaked at more than 600 million Meet participants in a single week,” he said.
More than half the canceled Las Vegas conventions “have rebooked for future dates,” MGM Resort CEO Bill Hornbuckle said on a Q2 call Thursday. Those selling products, “whether it's CES or corporate America that comes here,” know they need to “get in front of people," he said. “If you think about the tech companies we host” at Mandalay Bay, the “vast majority” are into “selling something,” and “you've got to do that one-on-one,” he said. That’s why “they're anxious to return,” he said. That venue is where CES customarily holds its media day news conferences; the entire conference was canceled last week (see 2007280034). All MGM properties in Las Vegas are open except for the Mirage, Park MGM and NoMad, said Hornbuckle. COVID-19 "headlines" in Las Vegas “continue to have a meaningful impact on booking trends and cancellations,” he said. “Our visibility is limited to booking windows that are currently less than a week.”