Revenue from Tower Semiconductor sales of RF silicon-on-insulator smartphone components increased 40% year over year in Q2 on surging consumer demand for 5G handsets, said CEO Russell Ellwanger on an earnings call Monday. Shipments of 5G smartphones are expected to double this year compared with 2020, reaching 550 million handsets globally out of a total of about 1.3 billion, he said. “This shift, combined with the high content increase of 5G and our strong position in this market, fuels our continued growth,” he said. “The shift to more advanced and higher-value 5G technology is helping increase the average selling prices in this segment. This trend is expected to continue for at least the next several quarters.”
Display-only video monitors and projectors should be exempt from FCC user-interface rules if they don’t render audio, said the Information Technology Industry Council in a call Tuesday with Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and Wireless Bureau staff, per a filing posted Friday in docket 21-140. ITI was represented among others by Senior Policy Counsel Joel Miller, former Commissioner Mike O’Rielly’s chief of staff when O’Rielly was at the agency. Miller left the FCC in early 2021 and was hired by ITI in May. Display-only monitors and projectors “do not possess the hardware or firmware needed to produce audio feedback,” the filing said. Requiring the devices to produce audio could effectively eliminate display-only devices, the group said: Changing the construction of such monitors to comply with user-interface rules would require additional chips, which are in a shortage. So manufacturers would need more time to comply.
The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security is “very busy” working to implement semiconductor supply chain recommendations from the White House in June stemming from President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order on the chips shortage and other supply-chain issues, said Sahar Hafeez, a senior BIS adviser. The agency is studying closer federal collaboration with industry on semiconductor demand and supply and is reviewing how export controls and investment restrictions might exacerbate supply-chain problems, Hafeez told an Information Systems Technical Advisory Committee meeting Wednesday. Perhaps the most immediate priority for Commerce is pushing Congress to pass and fund the Chips Act, she said. The bill, which would provide funding and incentives for U.S. semiconductor R&D and manufacturing, has been funded by the Senate but hasn't been approved in the House (see 2107220005). “We're laser focused on the House, and we encourage you all to help us get that across the finish line,” Hafeez told the ISTAC. She said Commerce is “cautiously optimistic” the House will approve funding. Though the global chip shortage has persisted for months, it still remains unclear to BIS which chips are most severely affected, Hafeez said. She said “mature node chips” are being “severely impacted,” but the shortage is affecting newer nodes as well, she said: “We've been trying to get more clarity. I don't know if it exists, That's an issue that we're grappling with -- the lack of transparency.”
Qualcomm continues to be “positively impacted” by the growth in 5G and the “changing OEM landscape, resulting in the expansion of our addressable handset opportunity,” said CEO Cristiano Amon on a fiscal Q3 earnings call Wednesday, his first as chief executive. “We see the shifts in OEM market share create an incredible opportunity for us,” he said: “This quarter, Xiaomi is now the No. 2 OEM.”
Provisions in the $65 billion broadband title in a developing infrastructure spending package weren't completely finalized Thursday, a day after the Senate cleared an initial test cloture vote 67-32 on proceeding to a shell bill (HR-3684). A bipartisan group of senators agreed Wednesday on the outlines of the package (see 2107280065). The Senate will vote Friday on the motion to proceed to HR-3684. Telecom-focused senators in both parties told us through Thursday that the thorniest broadband issue -- the extent of pricing transparency and digital redlining language -- remained in flux.
Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su is “quite pleased” with progress her company is making to increase supply amid the strong “semiconductor demand environment,” she said on a Q2 call Tuesday. “We've been working on supply for the past couple of quarters,” she said. “We do see some level of constraints, but we are making progress each quarter,” enough so AMD exceeded its revenue guidance for the quarter, she said. Supply is “tight, like you've heard from many other companies, through the end of this year,” but capacity “improves in 2022,” said Su: “We do have confidence that we can continue to grow substantially as we go into the second half of this year and into 2022 with the supply chain.” The stock closed 7.6% higher Wednesday at $97.93.
Supply constraints hit iPhones hard in the quarter that ended June 26, said Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri. CEO Tim Cook called such chip and other shortages an industry problem. For the iPhone, demand “has been so great and so beyond our own expectation that it's difficult to get the entire set of parts within the lead times that we try to get,” he said Tuesday: Supply constraints have largely been on legacy semiconductor nodes. “We're paying more for freight than I would like to pay, but component costs continue in the aggregate to decline,” he said. “We'll do everything we can to mitigate whatever set of circumstances we're dealt.” IPhone sales in Q3 jumped 50% from the year-ago quarter to $39.5 billion. Such “sales remained extremely strong across all regions” and exceeded Canaccord's 35% estimate, Michael Walkley wrote investors Wednesday. “Apple is well-positioned to continue to benefit from the 5G upgrade cycle,” the analyst wrote. He anticipates “strong overall growth trends as 5G smartphones ramp.”
National Electrical Manufacturers Association announces American Petroleum Institute’s Debra Phillips as president-CEO to succeed Kevin Cosgriff when he retires at year’s end ... Sony Electronics confirms departure of Cheryl Goodman as head-corporate communications, names Rosemary Flynn interim replacement ... Nexstar hires former Jefferies Managing Director Lee Ann Gliha as executive vice president-chief financial officer, effective Aug. 9, filling role vacant since Thomas Carter became president-chief operating officer in October ... Frontier Communications hires Spencer Kurn from New Street Research as senior vice president-investor relations.
A Hollywood Hills, California, electrical engineer was sentenced Thursday to 63 months in federal prison for his role in a scheme to illegally export chips with military uses to China, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Export Administration Regulations, said DOJ. Yi-Chi Shih, 66, was convicted July 2 and ordered to pay the IRS $362,698 in restitution for lying to the agency about his foreign assets, and also was fined $300,000. Shih defrauded a U.S. manufacturer of high-power broadband chips to gain access to the company’s confidential and proprietary business information, then used an accomplice posing as a domestic customer to buy the chips for U.S. use, said DOJ. “Shih concealed his true intent to export.” Attempts to reach Shih’s lawyers for comment Friday were unsuccessful.
House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., and ranking member Mike Turner, R-Ohio, filed the House version of the anti-Ligado Recognizing and Ensuring Taxpayer Access to Infrastructure Necessary (Retain) for GPS and Satellite Communications Act (S-2166) Thursday. Some lobbyists believe that portends a bid to attach it to the FY 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. The measure would require Ligado to pay costs of GPS users whose operations are hurt by its planned L-band operations (see 2106230050). The bill protects “critical” GPS and satellite communications “networks by ensuring that any costs caused by private sector interference to their frequencies is covered by the private sector,” Cooper said. The Keep GPS Working Coalition and other opponents of Ligado’s L-band plan hailed the bill’s House filing. The Retain GPS and Satellite Communications Act “would put the burden to pay where it belongs: on Ligado,” said the Satellite Safety Alliance. Ligado didn’t comment Friday. The Senate Armed Services Committee remained mum whether the panel attached S-2166’s text or other anti-Ligado language to the version of the FY 2022 NDAA it advanced last week. An executive summary said the measure increases funding for “cutting-edge research and prototyping activities at universities, small businesses, defense labs and industry” on 5G, artificial intelligence and other “critical” technologies. The measure includes an additional $264 million for DOD cybersecurity work. It mandates “the establishment of the microelectronics research network, originally established in the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act.”