Smartphone makers Motorola, Honor, Nothing, OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi are working with Qualcomm to develop smartphones with satellite communication capabilities, leveraging its Iridium-enabled Snapdragon Satellite platform, Qualcomm said Monday. It said Snapdragon Satellite also will expand to other device categories in computing, automotive and IoT. In a note to investors, William Blair's Louie DiPalma said those smartphone makers combined produce about 30% of global smartphone units. He said Android OEM Samsung "is notably absent from the list," but Samsung is very likely to become part of the Snapdragon Satellite group. Last week Samsung announced it was working on satellite connectivity for its Exynos chip.
Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Greg Pence, R-Ind., led refiling Monday of the Securing Semiconductor Supply Chains Act in a bid to expand the federal government’s effort to encourage U.S. chip manufacturing. The measure, which the Senate Commerce Committee first advanced in 2021 (see 2112090058), would direct the Commerce Department’s SelectUSA program to work with state-level economic development organizations to develop strategies to attract investment in U.S. semiconductor manufacturers and supply chains. “Semiconductor shortages made it abundantly clear that we cannot continue to depend on Communist China for critical materials for manufacturing and producing American products,” Blackburn said in a statement. “We need to build on the Chips and Science Act to continue advancing efforts that will lower the cost of goods and strengthen our economic competitiveness, supply chains and national security,” Peters said. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is a lead co-sponsor. “The Securing Semiconductor Supply Chains Act strengthens semiconductor supply chains by requiring federal and state government programs to develop strategies to attract investment in semiconductor manufacturing,” Eshoo said. The U.S. “learned the hard way that we simply cannot rely on foreign nations to secure semiconductor chips -- and that doing so jeopardizes America’s economic and national security," Pence said.
Smartphones using Qualcomm chips that tie to Iridium's L-band low earth orbit constellation will start to hit the market in the second half of this year, but those chips will likely end up in a wider array of consumer products over time, Iridium CEO Matt Desch said Thursday as the company announced Q4 2022 results. He said the chips will likely be used eventually in devices including laptops, tablets and cars. He said Iridium will increase capital spending to support the Qualcomm partnership. For the quarter, it had revenue of $193.8 million, up from $155.9 million the same quarter a year earlier. Chief Financial Officer Tom Fitzpatrick said revenue and subscriber numbers were both up sizably in 2022 and it expects notable growth in 2023 in its IoT, broadband, voice and data services businesses. William Blair analyst Louie DiPalma said in a note the Snapdragon Satellite service partnership with Qualcomm is expected to generate material revenue in 2024. There's an addressable market of 80 million to 100 million premium smartphone shipments annually in the near term, and that there's no major cost barrier for Qualcomm that prevents the Iridium service from expanding to tier-2 Android phones doubles the addressable market to 200 million annual smartphone shipments, DiPalma said. He said the Iridium satellite messaging service could motivate smartphone makers to use Qualcomm chips over MediaTek chips.
Wireless executives don’t think open radio access networks are ready for mass deployment now, but believe that could happen soon, Heavy Reading analyst Simon Stanley said during a Tuesday webinar. Based on a recent Heavy Reading survey, 19% believe ORAN is ready now, and 38% say it will be within the next 12 months, Stanley said. More than 70% see ORAN as likely ready for broad deployment within two years and 17% report they completed their first ORAN or virtual Ran (VRAN) installation, he said.
FCC nominee Gigi Sohn shouldn’t expect a Valentine’s Day change of tone in the questions she gets during her Tuesday confirmation hearing from Senate Commerce Committee Republicans, who have been steadfastly critical of her since President Joe Biden first nominated her in October 2021 (see 2110260076), lobbyists and observers said. Commerce Democratic leaders are hoping to keep their panel members united in support of Sohn during the hearing, with an eye to using their new outright 14-13 majority on the panel to quickly advance her to the full chamber. The committee tied 14-14 in March on advancing Sohn (see Ref:2203030070]), stalling her confirmation process through the rest of the year. The hearing, Sohn’s third appearance before Commerce as an FCC nominee, will begin at 10 a.m. in 253 Russell.
Incompas CEO Chip Pickering and others from the group laid out their policy priorities in a meeting with FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, said a filing posted Friday in 17-84 and other dockets. “The Commission can further promote competition in the broadband market by implementing a series of targeted reforms to its pole attachment and replacement rules that ensures a fair and equitable allocation of replacement costs between pole owners and new Attachers,” Incompas said: “Our members’ deployments continue to be stymied by pole owners’ unreasonable pole attachment and replacement practices, including denials and excessive delays for pole access and the imposition of unsubstantiated costs for pole replacements.” On spectrum, the group urged action on 12 GHz. “This band has no federal encumbrances, does not require an auction, and can be put to immediate use once the Commission updates its rules,” Incompas said.
Congress should pass legislation barring social media companies from collecting data on children and teens, banning targeted advertising for children and establishing tighter restrictions on personal data collection, President Joe Biden said Tuesday during his State of the Union address. Social media companies should be held accountable for the “experiment they are running on our children for profit,” he said. Biden urged Congress to pass legislation to “strengthen antitrust enforcement and prevent big online platforms from giving their own products an unfair advantage.” The first step in protecting children’s privacy is to pass comprehensive legislation that sets a national privacy standard, said House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.: “If President Biden truly wants to promote Big Tech transparency and accountability, protect our kids, and strengthen privacy protections for Americans, he should join Energy and Commerce's bipartisan efforts to enact comprehensive data privacy legislation.” Ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said he's ready to work across the aisle on privacy negotiations. Biden urged Congress to pass a Junk Fee Prevention Act that will “make cable, internet and cellphone companies stop charging you up to $200 or more when you decide to switch to another provider. We’ll cap service fees on tickets to concerts and sporting events and make companies disclose all fees upfront.” Biden touted Congress’ success in enacting the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which included $65 billion for connectivity, and the Chips and Science Act. “America used to make nearly 40% of the world’s chips,” but “in the last few decades, we lost our edge and we’re down to producing only 10%,” he said. “We all saw what happened during the pandemic when chip factories overseas shut down.” Car “prices went up,” as “did everything from refrigerators to cellphones,” Biden said: “We can never let that happen again.”
President Joe Biden called during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night for Congress to “pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us.” The government “must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit,” Biden said. He called for similar legislation last month amid hopes for more collaboration on privacy legislation.
National Economic Council Director Brian Deese plans to leave that post in mid-February, the White House said Thursday. Deese’s “work was critical to the passage of the most significant economic agenda in generations,” including “the most significant investment in our nation’s infrastructure in generations” via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which included $65 billion in connectivity money, and the Chips and Science Act (see 2207250061), “which ensures we make more high-end technology here at home so we can outcompete the world,” said President Joe Biden. Deese’s departure announcement came less than a day after former Obama administration NEC Director Jeff Zients took over as White House Chief of Staff. Zients, as NEC director, was involved in guiding then-President Barack Obama’s push for the FCC under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler to adopt net neutrality rules with a legal basis in Communications Act Title II (see 1502200049).
The Biden administration shouldn’t block U.S. companies from providing supplies to China’s Huawei by tightening export controls, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said Tuesday. Various news outlets, citing unnamed sources, report the administration is considering that. The White House didn't comment. “The administration’s ongoing efforts to bolster U.S. technology competitiveness have been commendable, but fully cutting off Huawei from U.S. suppliers would likely have the opposite effect,” said Stephen Ezell, ITIF vice president-global innovation policy. “Huawei technologies are already banned from U.S. telecommunications networks, which undercuts the national security rationale for cutting it off” and “there is a strong economic rationale not to cut off Huawei,” he said. China is a critical market for U.S. technology vendors, accounting for 36% of U.S. semiconductor sales as recently as 2019, Ezell said: “Every dollar a U.S. technology company earns in the Chinese market is one that Chinese competitors don’t earn, so banning exports to Huawei helps Chinese technology suppliers and hurts their U.S. counterparts.”