SiriusXM “migrated” 5,500 employees and contractors to work from home in “mere days” after the pandemic hit, but still experienced a “substantial disruption of our call center staffing,” said CEO Jim Meyer on a Q1 investor call Tuesday. Staffing fell 50% to 60%, “lengthening hold times, increasing abandoned rates and reducing our ability to handle customer needs and support our sales campaigns,” he said. “We have made significant improvement here, but I don't expect us to get back to our normal levels until stay-at-home orders are lifted.” With lockdown orders across most of the U.S., “we see an opportunity to get more Americans to stream SiriusXM, as well as a unique occasion to get our existing subscribers to stream more,” he said. A “close proxy” of the automotive shows sales down roughly 55% to 60%, said Chief Financial Officer David Frear. That’s “not quite as bad as we thought, and many states are now reevaluating whether auto dealer showrooms should remain closed,” he said. Lower auto sales today mean “fewer conversion opportunities three months from now,” when free trials expire, he said.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) asked President Donald Trump Monday to keep the Javits Convention Center open as a 2,500-bed COVID-19 Army field hospital through the fall flu season, Cuomo told his daily coronavirus briefing. Javits was one of four temporary facilities the Army Corps of Engineers built at the height of the crisis in the New York City area to reduce the strain on hospitals. “We’re now talking about the possibility of a second wave of the COVID virus or COVID combining with the regular flu season in September, which could be problematic again for the hospital capacity,” said Cuomo. “So the facilities we built, I spoke to the president about leaving them in place until we get through the flu season." Javits “we have to think about,” acknowledged Cuomo. "You can’t reopen the convention center, obviously, with the hospital beds in it." Javits is scheduled to host NAB Show New York Oct. 21-22 and the Audio Engineering Society convention Oct. 21-24. Neither NAB nor AES commented Monday. NAB already lost this month's Las Vegas show to COVID-19 (see 2003110036). AES put out an appeal Friday for $500,000 in funding by June 1 to keep it afloat amid multiple cancellations of sponsored events on which it relies for financial support (see 2004230055).
Two computer science professors with backgrounds in the “technical analysis of audio players,” controllers and components top the list of seven expert witnesses Sonos plans to call in the International Trade Commission’s Tariff Act Section 337 investigation into allegations that Google devices infringe five Sonos multiroom audio patents. Kevin Almeroth, a professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, represented Jawbone in its ITC patent fight against Fitbit over fitness trackers (see 1608300035), said documents (login required) filed Friday in docket 337-TA-1191. University of Minnesota professor Jon Weissman represented Facebook against allegations it stole BlackBerry mobile-computing applications, said the filings. The other experts are independent consultants with backgrounds in engineering, patent monetization and statistical analyses, they said. One consultant, Marc Levitt, spent seven years in the 1990s as senior hardware engineer at Sun Microsystems. Another, Cole Hershkowitz, leads a team building a mobile app for Blue Cross of Idaho. The Sonos ITC complaint seeks cease and desist and limited exclusion orders against Google smart speakers and other devices (see 2002060070).
Intel finished Q1 with $19.8 billion revenue, $800 million better than forecasts, partly from a 14% COVID-19-induced increase in its “PC-centric” business, said CEO Bob Swan on a Thursday investor call. Profit of $1.45 per share exceeded projections by 15 cents, he said. The forecast is for Intel’s Q2 PC revenue to be “flat or slightly up” compared with Q2 2019, said Chief Financial Officer George Davis. PC unit volume in Q1 was up 13% year over year “on higher notebook demand and increased supply,” he said. “Notebook demand strength is expected to continue into Q2 with more people working and learning from home due to COVID-19-related shelter-in-place orders.” Intel isn't releasing full-year 2020 guidance “with limited visibility due to the uncertainty driven by COVID-19,” said Davis, noting a "demand bump" so far from the virus' effects. Throughout the pandemic, “the world’s cloud and network infrastructure has delivered massive scaling to support vital workloads for businesses and consumers,” said Swan. “Cloud-delivered applications seen as conveniences a quarter ago, such as online shopping and video collaboration, have now become indispensable.”
Southern Nevada health authorities confirmed Friday that their existing COVID-19 testing and contact-tracing protocol give them little way of knowing whether the coronavirus was spreading among the 170,000 who attended CES 2020, as an American Public Media report Thursday inferred. CTA is “not aware of any confirmed cases of COVID-19 connected to CES 2020,” said the association.
The Audio Engineering Society launched an effort to raise $500,000 by June 1 to sustain the organization through the pandemic. Its next big convention is scheduled for Oct. 21-24, collocated for two days with NAB Show New York at the Javits Convention Center, which currently is a COVID-19 Army field hospital. The May 25-28 and July 23-25 events are canceled. AES isn't “immune to the havoc the COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking,” said the society Thursday. It draws its “traditional cashflow” from events, and those have been “severely disrupted,” it said. President Agnieszka Roginska asked, “If it is within your ability, may we ask that you make a financial contribution to help see your AES through these unprecedented times?"
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings praised Disney's rival service, which launched in November (see 1911120048). After more than 20 years of “watching different businesses” come and go, Hastings has “never seen such a good execution of the incumbent learning the new way and mastering it” than Disney’s launch of its direct-to-consumer streaming service, he said Tuesday. “To have them achieve over 50 million in six months, it's stunning,” Hastings said. Netflix expects “a bunch more” streaming services to come to market soon, he said. “It's great, obviously, for the consumer to be able to have all these options.” The significant increase in subscriber growth that Netflix experienced as the global COVID-19 pandemic hit in March was “essentially a pull forward of the rest of the year,” said Hastings on a Q1 call (see 2004210059). “Our guess is that subs will be light in Q3 and Q4 relative to prior years because of that.” Though content production is at a global standstill, “we work really far out relative to the industry because we launch our shows all episodes at once,” said Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. “So our 2020 slate of series and films are largely shot and are in post-production remotely.” Netflix is “actually pretty deep into our 2021 slate,” said Sarandos. Before shooting can resume anywhere, “we have to be able to look our employees and our cast and crews in the eye and say that this is a safe place to work,” he said.
COVID-19 forced cancellation of the Sept. 4-9 IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin as a physical event, organizers Messe Berlin tweeted. "IFA Berlin is set to go ahead in 2020, but with an innovative new concept, following the decision by the Berlin government to ban all events with more than 5,000 participants" until Oct. 24, they said. Organizers "anticipated this development and for several weeks now have been discussing a range of alternative concepts," they tweeted. "Planning is well advanced for a concept that will allow IFA to deliver on its core functions for our industry," they said, albeit in the form of a virtual event. CES is proceeding as planned for Jan. 6-9 in Las Vegas, said CTA Tuesday (see 2004210057), hours before IFA cancellation.
CTA’s application to register the NEXTGEN TV logo as a certification mark for ATSC 3.0-compliant TVs (see 1909260021) cleared its 30-day publication window in late March with no oppositions filed, said a notice of allowance (NOA) released Tuesday at the Patent and Trademark Office. The NOA gives CTA until Oct. 21 to file a statement of use (SOU) if it’s using the NEXTGEN TV mark in actual commerce. That's the final step before PTO can issue a registration certificate. Several TV models introduced at CES with 3.0 reception (see 2001060019) have arrived at retail, but with many stores closed or relegated to curbside pickup, TV makers are unable to promote the feature. CTA also can file for an SOU extension by Oct. 21 and do so every six months for up to three years. Oct. 21 happens to fall on the scheduled opening day of the two-day NAB Show New York event at the Javits Convention Center.
CTA plans to proceed as scheduled with CES 2021 Jan. 6-9 in Las Vegas, though the show will have changes, emailed the association Tuesday. “Almost every major exhibitor has signed up.” The show will “implement changes to enable social distancing,” said CTA. “These include widening aisles within our exhibit facilities, more space between seats in our conference program and other areas where attendees congregate.” The association will issue “best practices for exhibitors on demonstrating products and for attendees, such as wearing masks and avoiding shaking hands,” it said. CTA is working “on options to expand the show digitally,” it said. “Construction work continues during the pandemic on the new West Hall expansion at the Las Vegas Convention Center, said CTA. Local authorities recently began the work of pouring 600,000 square feet of concrete flooring in the main exhibit hall, it said: “The process will take between four and five months to complete -- a major step forward in the expansion construction, which is now 77% complete.”