Fight for the Future, Public Citizen and 20 other groups urged six publications to “rescind” recommendations of Amazon’s Ring products. The “cameras surveil millions of Americans” and amid “the massive growth of this private network of cameras, the tech giant is aggressively expanding their police partnerships,” said Wednesday's letter to CNET, Consumer Reports, Digital Trends, TechRadar, Tom’s Guide and Wirecutter. “Putting Black lives in danger is part of Amazon Ring’s business model. The tech giant weaponizes racist, fear-mongering culture by using racially-coded language and dog whistles to promote Ring products and partnerships. ... Amazon marketed Rekognition to police with the full awareness of two damning facts: first, that police misuse facial recognition, and second, that Rekognition disproportionately misidentifies Black and brown people, transgender people, and women.” Ring surveils, intimidates and punishes Black Lives Matter protesters, the groups said, citing Electronic Frontier Foundation-released records showing Los Angeles Police Department detectives requested such footage of BLM protests. Amazon didn’t comment.
The global smartphone CMOS image sensor (CIS) market had $15 billion in 2020 revenue, growing 13% year on year, said Strategy Analytics Tuesday. Smartphone OEMs “aggressively adopted high-resolution sensors and higher sensor count across smartphone tiers in 2020," creating strong demand, said analyst Jeffrey Mathews. The expansion of multiple cameras and advanced photography capabilities in smartphones will fuel more demand that could be challenged by semiconductor shortages, said analyst Stephen Entwistle. Sony led with 46% share, followed by Samsung System LSI and OmniVision. The three chip vendors had about 85% of the market, but Sony’s market dominance will be threatened by increasing competition in the segment, said Mathews.
OneWeb and SatixFy, a British multibeam antenna and terminal design firm, will collaborate to develop an in-flight connectivity terminal that will work on OneWeb's low earth orbit constellation and on geostationary orbit satellite networks, they said Friday. They said SatixFy formed a joint venture with Singapore Technology Engineering to commercialize the terminal for commercial aviation markets.
Oppo joined the Alliance for Open Media at the promoter level and will work with other members to advance technologies in content creation and provision, video compression, and media delivery and consumption, AOMedia said Thursday. The company will help shape open and interoperable media streaming standards that power web-based video, AOMedia said.
Consumer demand for chips and faster mobile communications won't ebb soon, said executives at a major manufacturer of consumer electronics for other companies. "Things will be back to more normal conditions” in January-March 2022, said Jabil CEO Mark Mondello of semiconductor supply-demand balance. “We think this thing will start to show levels of relief” in fiscal Q1, ending late November, “and for sure as we get into calendar '22,” he said. Demand for semiconductors “has never been higher, with the accelerated convergence of technologies and the associated data generation and storage needs,” Chief Financial Officer Mike Dastoor told a call Tuesday for fiscal Q2, ended Feb. 28. “Nearly every part of the economy runs on silicon.” Jabil is seeing what “finally looks to be reasonable plans in terms of the 5G wireless rollout,” said Mondello. “That’s here to stay, not a number of months, but a number of years,” he said. “That’s going to have all kinds of tangents tied to it as well, once the 5G rollout gets underway, in terms of derivatives to other parts of our business.” The technology is speeding the “secular expansion of cloud adoption and infrastructure growth,” he said.
Organizations prefer buying from tech firms that “are transparent and proactive” in helping them manage cybersecurity risk, a survey found. Intel hired Ponemon Institute to canvass nearly 1,900 individuals in the U.S., U.K., Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa who are involved in overseeing their organizations’ IT infrastructure security. About three-quarters said it’s highly important that their technology provider offer “hardware-assisted capabilities to mitigate software exploits.” A similar proportion said their organizations are more likely to buy technologies and services from providers that proactively fight security vulnerabilities. Forty-eight percent said their tech providers don’t do this.
Samsung agreed to license Nokia’s video standards patents, said Nokia Thursday. Samsung will make royalty payments to Nokia, but the terms of the agreement are confidential. Nokia didn’t say which video standards are involved, but it’s on record as asserting ownership of H.264 standard-essential patents on HD video (see 2007180001).
The “supply-side push” of 5G devices will help propel global smartphone shipments to 13.9% year-over-year growth in Q1 and 5.5% for 2021, reported IDC Wednesday, forecasting a 3.6% compound annual growth rate for smartphones through 2025. IDC expects 5G-enabled handsets to be more than 40% of volume in 2021, and 69% share in 2025. “Strong performance" in Q4 "led to a huge push from all OEMs to increase production,” said IDC Senior Analyst Sangeetika Srivastava. “Although this may create some temporary challenges in production, we do not foresee any significant gap as the manufacturers successfully cope.”
Samsung’s delay in launching its 2021 foldable smartphones until Q3 will spark an unexpectedly “significant surge” in such shipments August through December, blogged Display Supply Chain Consultants CEO Ross Young Monday. At least three models are expected from Samsung, including “a more aggressively priced version” of its clamshell foldable, he said. “Samsung should drive a lot of volume.” Q4 2020 foldable shipments were up 54% from Q3 and 242% from the 2019 quarter. A 40% year-on-year decline is expected in Q2 2021, but shipments in Q3 and Q4 “should each be up well over 100%,” he said.
Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Sound for smartphones, wireless earbuds and headsets. It combines technologies from the chipmaker’s mobile and audio platforms, delivering “high-resolution, wired quality audio, wirelessly,” it said Thursday. It's for streaming music, communications and wireless gaming. Also Thursday, Amazon Music and Qualcomm announced a curated Snapdragon Sound playlist on Amazon’s premium HD Music service.