Wireless and Wisconsin state officials looked to a 5G future, and even one with 8K TV, with Wednesday's announcement Foxconn will invest $10 billion and create 13,000 jobs in the state. CEO Terry Gou's prominent mentions at a White House ceremony of building an 8K and 5G “ecosystem” in Kenosha likely means “there’s more to it for Foxconn than just the TVs,” said Ross Young, CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants, in an interview. No “technical barriers” limit LCD panel suppliers “from making 8K even with amorphous silicon,” said Young. With 4K not yet “fully matured,” there’s a “question” of whether “is it really the time to introduce 8K and limit the success of 4K products,” he said. “There’s no content at 8K." Gou said “we are in the middle of the iPhone revolution,” as “high-resolution 8K displays and the powerful 5G communications will greatly increase the growth of big data. With artificial intelligence, a new 8K/5G ecosystem is born.” Displays with 8K resolution are “the key to our future,” said Gou. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said a memorandum of understanding was being signed Thursday with the company, with $3 billion in “incentives” from Wisconsin. The region “we will call Wisconn Valley will become the new global home to cutting-edge technology and innovation,” he said. Walker said that when visiting Foxconn facilities in China, he saw the 8K that Gou “talks about,” and “it is phenomenal.” The company will build a "state-of-the-art manufacturing facility for the production of LCD panel products," President Donald Trump said at the ceremony, with "a larger facility [to be] constructed over the coming years. And that facility is currently under negotiation." He noted the company’s initial investment of $10 billion-plus creates 3,000 jobs, with the potential for 13,000, and the plant represents "the return of LCD electronics and electronics manufacturing" to the U.S.
Test miles of autonomous vehicles plus “quality of the miles" spells “validation,” said General Motors CEO Mary Barra on an earnings call. “To our knowledge, we're the only one testing our autonomous vehicles in downtown San Francisco, which is a pretty dense urban environment with a lot more, I'll say, opportunities to learn from different situations,” said Barra in Q&A Tuesday. “There's quite a bit of work we're doing, even with agencies or groups outside of the company, to put that together.” Under last fall's autonomous-driving report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (see 1609200039), “a big portion of the guidelines they've put out” is for automakers to “demonstrate how you're measuring” self-driving progress and performance, “and then share that” data with industry and government as NHTSA looks at “authorizing, pulling the driver out of the vehicle,” she said. “It's much more involved than just miles traveled.” Lyft's plans to start its own autonomous-driving research won’t affect their self-driving alliance (see 1601040068), Barra said. GM's efforts without Lyft are "quite far along,” she said. GM sees “opportunity to deploy” self-driving cars via ride hailing, she said. "That's in the early stages of sub-deployment."
Corning views 5G as having great potential for the company, said CEO Wendell Weeks on a Wednesday earnings call. “If truly 5G as it is defined by the industry becomes the standard way to do wireless connectivity, then we are looking at a very significant secular driver of our product.” The migration to 5G “perhaps” will be the most significant development “that we have seen in our long and storied history in this business,” Weeks said. It's “too early to make a call on what exact architectures will be used,” he said. “The only question is the size, scale and timing of that momentum.” Weeks thinks “it’s easy to be confident long term” about the prospects for tax changes under the Trump administration. “The current tax policy of the United States is not stable over time,” said Weeks. He thinks bad tax policy "leads to things that are not good for our economy or jobs, and that ultimately that’s going to get fixed.” “What I am much less confident about is how the political math works in any given year, so I think calling timing on that one is above my paygrade."
That Apple contract manufacturer Foxconn may be nearing a decision to build a $10 billion display fab in Wisconsin (see 1706230041) is “a hard case to make in terms of labor and other costs,” said Chris DeMuth, chief investment officer at Rangeley Capital, on a Monday podcast. U.S. labor costs are “competitive” with those of other world regions only at the very high end of “precision-type manufacturing,” such as for specialty medical devices, said DeMuth. Flat-panel screens “can be made much cheaper in Asia,” he said. That’s why DeMuth sees any decision to build a plant in Wisconsin as a “political” ploy to win favor with the Trump administration, he said. Though building a highly robotic plant in Wisconsin “could make some business sense for Foxconn, I think it’s definitely a political play,” agreed Andrew Walker, Rangeley Capital portfolio manager. “I don’t think it’s an accident that they’re looking to build in Wisconsin, Paul Ryan’s home state,” said Walker of the Republican House speaker. Building a U.S. plant also “serves as an economic hedge” against possible trade wars, he said. “If they do jack up the taxes on iPhones coming into the U.S., you can start building them in the U.S. at that plant you’ve already built.” Foxconn and Wisconsin representatives didn’t comment Tuesday. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou is scheduled to keynote IFA Sept. 2 in Berlin (see 1707110023).
BBC research into virtual reality found most are dazzled by their first “in-home” experiences, with other reasons likely keeping most from buying, the broadcaster said Friday. The VR industry risks “another trough of disillusionment” if it doesn’t find “consistency between the currently fragmented hardware and software experiences,” it said. For those who have experienced VR, “the hype is understandable,” Tim Fiennes, senior market analyst-audiences, blogged Friday. BBC teamed with Ipsos Connect in the study. Most U.K. teen and adult study participants saw their first VR experience as having “far outstripped" lowered expectations, he said. “Headsets will get cheaper and more content will be made.” To be successful, “it needs simple, intuitive and consistent interfaces, better curation and content discovery,” and a big supply of quality content, he said. After three months, participants mostly wouldn't buy headsets, often citing hardware problems, Fiennes wrote. Content was a bigger impediment, he said. It’s by no means “a given that all technology becomes mainstream,” he said. “Think 3DTV.”
The import ban that Qualcomm seeks against iPhones that don't contain Qualcomm baseband processor chips (see 1707120023) "would negatively affect U.S. consumers who rely on Apple products," Apple told the International Trade Commission in comments posted Thursday in ITC docket 3235. Intel, in its comments, called itself Qualcomm’s last remaining competitor in the “merchant market” for “premium LTE” baseband processor chips, urging the ITC to reject the iPhone import ban.
Qualcomm holds the "high ground” in the patent fight with Apple, CEO Steve Mollenkopf said on a Wednesday earnings call. The chip company last week at the International Trade Commission alleged iPhones are imported into the U.S. in violation of patents (see 1707120023). “Fundamentally, these issues are driven by commercial interests and contract negotiations and we will continue to work to reach resolutions as we have,” he said. The company has had “a strong relationship with Apple for many years," Mollenkopf said. “We intend to continue to provide them with our industry-leading products and technologies as we always have and do our best to remain a good supplier to Apple even while this dispute continues.” It typifies “a number of the ones we have resolved in the past and we expect to be able to do that again here,” President Derek Aberle said. Apple “has interfered with our license agreement with its contract manufacturers by instructing them not to pay the royalties they owe” for sales of Apple product, Aberle said. Qualcomm made “several offers to Apple to have an independent third-party ... set the royalty terms of a direct license,” he said. “Apple has refused those offers.” Apple representatives didn’t comment Thursday.
V 8.0 of the Energy Star TV spec takes effect April 16, EPA said Tuesday in releasing the third and final draft. Release was delayed after EPA became inundated with input, mostly relating to the “luminance requirements” and how Energy Star-qualifying TVs could best implement the energy-saving automatic brightness control (ABC) feature, agency officials had told us. CTA in May warned EPA to stay out of the business of designing TVs (see 1706020034). A “comment-response document” disclosed the agency consulted a Japanese study published in 2008 by the Society for Information Display finding most viewers preferred a screen brightness of between 150 and 200 nits. EPA is proposing in the final draft to keep the luminance floor at a fixed 125 nits “to allow for some flexibility in user preferences, without varying too much from ISF's findings,” it said. Comments are due Aug. 2.
Netflix streaming membership in Q2 “grew more than expected due to our amazing content,” the company said Monday in its quarterly letter to shareholders. Netflix added 5.2 million subscribers in Q2, including 1.1 million in the U.S, and 4.1 million internationally, it said. That compared favorably with the 1.7 million new members it added in Q2 a year earlier, including 1.5 million internationally and only 200,000 in the U.S. “It was a good quarter,” the company said. “The competition for entertainment time is always intense, but the silver lining is that the market is vast and diverse,” Netflix said. Linear TV “is still huge, piracy still substantial, and there are thousands of firms and approaches around the world earning some fraction of consumers’ entertainment time.” So “broad” is the entertainment market opportunity that Netflix has grown from zero to more than 50 million streaming homes in the U.S. in the past decade, “and yet HBO continues to increase its US subscriptions,” the company said. “It seems our growth just expands the market. The largely exclusive nature of each service’s content means that we are not direct substitutes for each other, but rather complements.” The “large-cap tech companies, especially Amazon, are investing heavily in original and licensed content around the world,” Netflix said. “Creating a TV network is now as easy as creating an app, and investment is pouring into content production around the world. We are all co-pioneers of internet TV and, together, we are replacing linear TV. The shift from linear TV to on-demand viewing is so big and there is so much leisure time, many internet TV services will be successful. The internet may not have been great for the music business due to piracy, but, wow, it is incredible for growing the video entertainment business around the world.”
The FCC “has the opportunity to seize the momentum” from the end of the incentive auction “to transition ATSC 3.0 through an organic, market-driven process,” CTA told members of the Media Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology in Tuesday meetings, said an ex parte notice filed Thursday, and posted Friday in docket 16-142. The petition asking the commission to allow broadcasters to transmit using ATSC 3.0's physical layer "was filed over a year ago," in April 2016 (see 1604130065), “but industry still does not have the certainty needed to move forward,” CTA said. The South Korean transition to ATSC 3.0 is “driving industry” to deploy TVs with dual ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 tuners, and “the current prevalence of smart TVs will smooth the consumer transition to ATSC 3.0,” it said. ATSC, CTA and other standards organizations “are working in parallel to develop standards and best practices for the transmission standard ATSC 3.0 that will continue to allow industry to meet its legal and regulatory obligations, including those related to accessibility,” it said. CTA would like "for the FCC to issue its Order soon" on ATSC 3.0's final rules, said Julie Kearney, vice president-regulatory affairs, Friday when asked what sort of certainty CTA seeks from the commission. "We know that it hopes to, but we really want it issued," Kearney said of the order. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in February he hoped to have the order authorizing ATSC 3.0 as a final voluntary standard by year-end, while Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said authorization of the final standard could occur “hopefully by Halloween" (see 1702230060).