The California Consumer Privacy Act and California Privacy Rights Act “could mark the beginning of a trend toward more stringent privacy legislation” in the U.S., reported Vizio’s initial public stock offering registration Monday. "CCPA has prompted a number of proposals for federal and state privacy legislation that, if passed, could increase our potential liability, add layers of complexity to compliance in the U.S. market, increase our compliance costs and adversely affect our business.” Vizio has “historically maintained,” and consumers have come to expect, “extensive backward compatibility for our older products and the software that supports them, allowing older products to continue to benefit from new software updates,” said the IPO. “In the near term, this backward compatibility will no longer be practical or cost-effective, and we may decrease or discontinue service for our older products.” 2020 profit soared 344% to $102.5 million on an 11% revenue gain to $2.04 billion. Vizio shipped 7.1 million smart TVs last year, up 20%. The company pulled an earlier IPO when it signed a 2016 deal to be bought by LeEco for $2 billion. The agreement later fell apart.

Best Buy tempered expectations after a 13% year-on-year sales increase, to $16.9 billion, in the quarter ended Feb. 1 (see Q4 materials here). The retailer didn’t give customary full fiscal year guidance because of pandemic uncertainties, but “planning assumptions” are for comparable sales of minus 2% to 1% higher, said Chief Financial Officer Matt Bilunas on a Thursday call. While demand for technology remains at “elevated levels,” uncertainty about administration of vaccines and shopping patterns makes predictions difficult, Bilunas said. Online sales grew 89.3% to $6.7 billion, said CEO Corie Barry. Headcount dropped 17% to 102,000, she said. Best Buy is partnering with Microsoft on healthcare initiatives, said Bilunas. Barry cited growing opportunities in 5G, beyond smartphones, noting customers can schedule consultations with a Best Buy adviser while shopping at Samsung.com. Shares closed down 9.3% at $102.94.

Global 5G subscriptions are expected to triple, reaching 2.1 billion in 2024, reported the Norwegian personal finance website Aksje Bloggen Wednesday. North America is the second-largest region for 5G adoption, behind Northeast Asia, with 60 million subscriptions in 2021. “This figure is forecast to hit 276 million by 2024, a 360% increase in three years.”

A 125-watt flash charger and 65-watt wireless charger were among products on display at Oppo’s booth at Mobile World Congress Shanghai Wednesday, said the company. The 125-watt flash charger can pump a 4,000 mAh phone battery to 100% in 20 minutes, Oppo said. The 65-watt AirVooc wireless flash charger can charge the same battery in 30 minutes, it said. It also showed future wireless charging technology that delivers up to 7.5 watts of charging power using magnetic resonance at distances up to 3.9 inches.

Wireless charging company WiTricity raised $18 million in funding from iPhone co-inventor Tony Fadell’s Future Shape venture capital firm and other private investors, it said Tuesday. That adds to October's $34 million infusion. WiTricity also announced that Fadell joined its recently launched advisory board. “With the global standard set for [electric vehicle] wireless charging, and automaker launches imminent, wireless charging should become a primary feature of EVs coming to market in the next design cycle,” said WiTricity CEO Alex Gruzen.

Ericsson launched three new radios in its massive multiple-input, multiple-output portfolio and expanded its radio access network compute portfolio, said the company Monday. “After the first rollouts of 5G networks, now is the time to scale up 5G by leveraging Massive MIMO to a much larger extent,” said Per Narvinger, head-product area networks.

It’s too early to say what will “formally define” 6G wireless, but Qualcomm Technologies “will be there just like we’ve been for every mobile technology leap as we continue to drive longer-term research across core wireless disciplines and a growing mix of adjacent technologies,” blogged Vice President-Engineering John Smee Monday. It’s working to enable 5G for “a broader set of industries” beyond mobile broadband, he said. Qualcomm R&D teams expanded their over-the-air test beds to “support enhanced and new features” in industrial and automotive applications,” he said. It continues to “optimize” 5G for industrial IoT, such as supporting ultra-high reliability communication and time-sensitive networking, he said. Qualcomm will show at this week’s MWC Shanghai for the first time “how sidelink communications between devices can deliver broader coverage and higher capacity for IIoT applications,” he said: It’s showcasing how sidelink can complement “wide-area 5G” for advanced automotive applications, such as navigation based on high-resolution 3D maps.

With broadening adoption of 5G handsets, “silicon content in smartphones is growing at double-digit [percentage] rates,” said Applied Materials CEO Gary Dickerson on a quarterly call Thursday. Historic pandemic-fueled spikes in consumer and enterprise demand for technology are “irreversible, since new ways of working offer compelling advantages in terms of time and productivity,” he said. “Within the electronics ecosystem itself, key technology inflections are driving increasing silicon consumption.” Companies are “rethinking and reengineering the way they operate and there's an immense pull for advanced technology,” said Dickerson. “Consumers are making different choices about the way they spend their time, and the products and services they buy.” Revenue for the quarter ended Jan. 31 was a record $5.16 billion, up 24% year over year. The stock closed 5.3% higher Friday at $119.46.

Launching the Sony Retail Experience store-within-a-store format is among the best moves Sony Electronics North America President Mike Fasulo made, he told us in an exit interview (see personals section, Feb. 4; see also 2102160027). The program originated at Best Buy and has expanded elsewhere. “It gave us a mechanism to actually hear directly from the end user,” Fasulo said. “That’s really hard to do today. If you have a direct business, you’re hearing from consumers every day. But if you go through the channel, as we do, things are filtered.” Sony engineers take "those insights and trends and not only apply it in the U.S., but on a global basis,” Fasulo said.

Tests show ATSC 3.0 “can provide robust reception of data at all vehicular speeds,” concluded a paper by Sony engineers Luke Fay, Graham Clift and Fred Ansfield. “This field test shows that broadcasters can transmit both high throughput stationary services as well as robust automotive services simultaneously to target a diverse set of receiving devices,” it said. “Delivery of data of any kind (infotainment, software updates, navigation maps, etc.) is robust and reliable.” Automotive field tests Sony conducted in the fall with Pearl TV in Phoenix and News Press & Gazette in Santa Barbara, California, found NextGenTV can be a viable broadcast service for delivery of “robust passenger infotainment” to vehicles and “easily transmit software updates and information to fleets" of vehicles, the company said Wednesday. Prototype Android and Sony devices were involved.