Rebecca Day

Roku community members blasted Roku Monday in its dispute with Google over what Roku called “unfair terms” for YouTube TV. Some users received an email from Roku warning of the possibility “that Google may take away your access to the YouTube TV channel,” saying recent negotiations “have broken down because Roku cannot accept Google’s unfair terms as we believe they could harm our users.” Roku cited Google’s “unfair and anticompetitive requirements to manipulate your search results, impact the usage of your data and ultimately cost you more.” It urged customers to “contact Google and urge them to reach an agreement.” Roku employee Mary told the community the company isn't removing the YouTube TV channel “at this time," it's "just making customers like you aware of this possibility.” Google has been “working with Roku in good faith to reach an agreement that benefits our viewers and their customers," said a Google spokesperson. "Unfortunately, Roku often engages in these types of tactics in their negotiations.” Google is “disappointed that they chose to make baseless claims while we continue our ongoing negotiations.” Google has tried to ensure a “high quality and consistent experience for our viewers” and has made “no requests to access user data or interfere with search results.” It hopes the companies can resolve the issue “for the sake of our mutual users.”

After moderating declines in pay-TV subscriptions due to stay-at-home trends, losses will tick up to 6.6% this year, from 4.9% in 2020, S&P Global predicted Friday. Losses will be primarily from larger cable operators, as consumers continue to abandon pay TV’s “steadily increasing prices for less expensive streaming video options.” The cable industry’s indifference is increasing on “whether unprofitable customers get their video service from cable companies or a third-party service,” said the report. Though cord cutting’s impact and fewer pay-TV cable bundles are “negative for the U.S. television sector’s credit quality,” the effect on ratings in the cable sector will be "muted” due to the strength of providers’ broadband service, S&P said. Satellite pay-TV subscribers will drop by double digits, said the report. Though Dish Network’s focus on key rural subscribers slowed its losses, the sustainability of that trend is “uncertain,” said the report. Dish may “struggle to continue passing along rate increases as life normalizes and demand for in-home entertainment subsides,” it said. Churn could increase in 2021 as vaccination rates increase and consumers become more comfortable letting technicians into their homes to switch providers or move, it said. S&P cited bipartisan government support to increase broadband availability, which would “shrink the addressable market significantly” over several years. S&P sees DirecTV's subscriber retention “woes” continuing this year. It had expected such losses to moderate last year as the company cycled through circa-2017 subscribers on deeply discounted plans. That didn’t occur: The pace of subscriber defections remained at about 15%, it said. DirecTV's subscribers skew to urban and suburban markets, where they have access to broadband and streaming alternatives. Dish and NCTA declined to comment Monday. DirecTV owner AT&T didn't comment.

Skyworks Solutions is paying $2.75 billion for Silicon Labs’ Infrastructure & Automotive business. Silicon Labs initiated a sale process last fall to address the “massive opportunity” in IoT, said CEO Tyson Tuttle. The segment “requires focus” and investment and has been Silicon Labs’ area of concentration for the past decade, now representing 60% of revenue, Tuttle told investors Thursday. IoT offers the largest and fastest growth opportunity, he said, and it's a “high quality” portion of the business due to the company’s ability to “control the integration path” by integrating components inside single devices, then differentiating with software, solutions, cloud and AI. Chief Financial Officer John Hollister said such growth areas include Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Silicon Labs closed Friday up 6.9% at $154.60. Skyworks gained 4.1% to $190.92. The deal is expected to close in Q3. Silicon Labs also made some personnel moves. (See the personals section of this issue.)

Apple showed off its newer chips amid moving some chipmaking away from more established semiconductor manufacturers. Its Tuesday launch event showed the first iMac and iPads to use Apple’s M1 chip, and its latest smartphones include 5G. CEO Tim Cook gave a sneak peek into the second season of Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso before handing off to Cindy Lin, director-program management, who unveiled the next Apple TV 4K ($179). The streaming media player has power “that smart TVs just don’t have," she said. It's based on the A12 Bionic chip, used in the latest iPhones, and brings a “massive upgrade” to a TV, said Lin. The latest Apple 4K TV steps up to high-frame-rate Dolby Vision HDR at 60 frames per second, making content look more lifelike, she said. Apple is working with Fox Sports, NBCUniversal, Paramount+, Red Bull TV and Canal+ as they begin to stream in high-frame-rate HDR, said the company. Videos shot on iPhone 12 Pro can be displayed in 60 fps Dolby Vision with AirPlay via the new streamer. A new color balance feature in Apple 4K TV works with an iPhone to improve TV picture quality, said Lin. The company also introduced Apple Podcasts Subscriptions. Pricing is set by creators.

Staggering numbers stood out in Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ final shareholder letter as CEO, in Thursday's posting, citing the e-commerce pioneer’s revenue growth, employee expansion and towering stock price rise from its opening $18 per share valuation when it went public almost 12 years ago. Bezos will soon transition to executive chairman, relinquishing the CEO post to Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy. Of the company’s $386 billion revenue in 2020, $301 billion was value created, for consumer and AWS customers ($164 billion), employees ($91 billion), third-party sellers ($25 billion) and shareholders ($21 billion), said Bezos. The goal of a business “should be to create value for everyone you interact with,” said the outgoing CEO, who will hand over the reins to Jassy in Q3. Bezos calculated value to customers in terms of time savings. Customers complete 28% of purchases on Amazon in three minutes or less, and half of all purchases are finished in less than 15 minutes, said Bezos. He compared that time with “about an hour” shoppers spend in the physical store experience. He estimated a "conservative" $10 per hour in time savings. Bezos estimated the company’s value creation for customers using the AWS cloud computing platform last year at $38 billion, based on the assumption that operating in the cloud delivers a 30% improvement in costs, along with the increased speed AWS provides in software development. AWS revenue was $45 billion. Third-party seller profits from selling on Amazon were estimated at $25 billion-$39 billion, he said. Seven-eighths of the $1.6 trillion of wealth Amazon has created for shareholders since the stock began trading benefits pension funds, universities, 401(k) plans and individuals, he said. The stock closed marginally higher Thursday at $3,379.09.

Face masks will be required at all times at CEDIA Expo 2021, said a health and safety plan sent Monday to prospective CEDIA attendees by show owner Emerald Holding. Conferences are to begin Aug. 31, and the Expo is scheduled for Sept. 1-3 at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis. Emerald, whose 2020 revenue plummeted 65% to $127.4 million due to the pandemic, is taking “extra precautions, beyond those mandated by government and local authorities, including temperature checks and face masks required of all persons entering the building, without exception,” it said. Daily temperature screens will be done as attendees enter the facility; anyone with a “high temperature” won’t be admitted, it said. Attendees will have to acknowledge and accept terms and conditions before entering the event, certifying they aren’t sick and don’t have signs or symptoms of COVID-19. They have to “make every effort to maintain" the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's hygiene guidelines, Emerald said: “CEDIA Expo has a no-contact policy in place.” The physical structure of the show was designed to allow social distancing and one-way entrances and exits, Emerald said. Attendees also agree to release Emerald and its affiliates from "all risks, claims, damages, losses, costs and expenses ... associated with, resulting from or arising in connection with my participation or presence at the CEDIA Expo event."

Computer malware detections were down over 43% year on year in 2020, partly due to work-from-home trends, said Rick Meder, solutions architect at SonicWall, at a Home Technology Specialists of America session, referencing the company’s annual cyberthreat report. But remote desktop protocol attacks soared from just over one per day worldwide in January 2020 to eight attacks per second in September, Meder said Monday. IoT malware detections grew over 66% last year globally and 152% in North America, said Meder. Cryptojacking is at a three-year high, up over 300% from 2019, he said. A widely publicized $50 million ransomware attack on Acer last month was the largest known to date, he said. The 66% increase in IoT malware is due largely to the proliferating entry points in smart homes, said Meder, citing a “major increase in hits on light bulbs” from different brands. Cryptocurrency is a particularly attractive target due to its value, he said. Bad actors are “going in and taking over anything that has processing power to attempt to mine bitcoin,” such as smart thermostats, lights, locks, controllers and TVs, since "everything is connected these days.” On how to deal with the threats, Meder said integrators have to consider what edge protection devices their clients need to secure their networks and smart devices -- and their hosted email. HTSA integrators need to move their businesses and customers away from routers with consumer-grade security to enterprise-grade with a next-generation firewall. He also suggested installing a VPN that’s locked down tight and protecting cloud services with phishing detection. The need for custom integrators to shore up cyber liability insurance is growing as “illicit cyberactivity continues to proliferate on a global scale,” said Tom Doherty, HTSA director-new technology initiatives. Global losses due to cybercrime will exceed $6 trillion this year, said Doherty, citing Cybersecurity Ventures data. Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) are particularly vulnerable, he said, citing National Cyber Security Alliance data that shows over 70% of all cyberattacks target small businesses. SMBs that store any records online “need dedicated cyber liability protection,” he said.

As virtual MVPDs continue to poach customers from traditional pay TV, the need to address one of their most appealing differentiators -- no-contract subscriptions -- continues to challenge the segment, said Parks Associates analyst Paul Erickson at the company’s virtual Future of Video conference last week. “There’s a higher level of churn than in traditional pay-TV services,” a factor that’s “likely to persist,” said Erickson, asking panelists what strategies vMVPDs could adopt to stem customer defections. Nic Wilson, TiVo head-customer success, said one possibility is to bundle over-the-top subscriptions like T-Mobile’s subscriber retention tack: “Find those services so that if they cancel your service, they’re not just canceling video." Erickson said the user experience is important to reduce subscriber churn, whether it’s superior content aggregation or a smarter, more personalized experience where relevant content is surfaced to subscribers. That can help retain customers in an environment where “people are bombarded by choice.” Michael Ribero, ViacomCBS’ Paramount+ vice president-global marketing, said an vMVPD service has “got to work like regular TV.” To ask someone from the traditional pay-TV world to come over to a vMVPD service means there can be no change in quality of service from pay TV, “which worked 99.9% of the time,” Ribero said. “I can’t say that always happens in the virtual world.” Customers particularly aren’t forgiving of a subpar sports experience, Ribero said. “If you have any sort of buffering or any sort of lapse, there’s no amount of customer service, there’s no amount of rebate -- people hate you and they want to leave.” The vMVPD experience should replicate the immediacy of over-the-air and MVPD TV viewing: “Being able to turn on [the TV], and something is just on,” Ribero said, would counter OTT viewers’ increasing “discovery fatigue.” It’s also important to let customers know that a vMVPD service is a complement to Netflix and Hulu, not a competitor, as consumers try to make sense of the myriad content options, he said. Ribero said it may be time for the industry to change the way it measures churn to reflect the different needs of the OTT model. A football fan who returns to a football package season after season doesn’t fit an old churn measurement model, he said: “Is that a win or not?” The ability to do “subscription management” based on channels within a bundle would give vMVPDs a “value-add” over other services, said Greg Riker, head-business development and sales, Americas, for Comcast's Metrological. An AI-based algorithm that understands subscribers' viewing interests could serve suggestions to swap channels for one more closely aligned with their interests. That would be a way to drive value for the service, he said.

CTA and NCTA announced an extension of a voluntary agreement for ongoing improvement to set-top box energy efficiency. The extension, beginning in 2023 and running through 2025, highlights IP set-top boxes, which are becoming the most common set-top box type in video distribution, they said Tuesday.

LG’s inability to come up with a “differentiated offering” to retain or win market share led to its exit from the mobile phone space, Gartner analyst Anshul Gupta told us Monday, after LG said it was exiting the “incredibly competitive” mobile phone segment. Getting out of mobile business will allow LG to focus resources on other markets, including electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart home, robotics AI, business-to-business solutions and platforms and services, it said.