Pixelworks’ ability to commercialize the “full potential” of TrueCut Motion, its homegrown motion-grading platform, “requires acceptance and buy-in from ecosystem partners” across the content creation, content distribution and device manufacturer “domains,” said CEO Todd DeBonis on a Q2 earnings call Wednesday. TrueCut Motion’s purpose is to establish that content creators’ “original intended motion look and feel is consistently delivered regardless of the screen on which it's viewed," he said. TCL became TrueCut Motion’s “first foundational ecosystem partner on the device side” at CES 2022 (see 2201040046), he said. Then Pixelworks said last month it’s working with Lightstorm Entertainment, director James Cameron’s production company, under a “multi-title licensing agreement,” to bring TrueCut Motion to Avatar, Titanic and other feature films (see 2207190001). TrueCut Motion is being used “to remaster both Avatar and Titanic in cinematic high-frame-rate 4K HDR for theatrical release,” said DeBonis. “With James Cameron's public endorsement, we expect to significantly elevate the awareness and interest for the TrueCut Motion platform.” TrueCut Motion’s “value proposition absolutely extends beyond the theater and into every living room, which we believe is one of the primary opportunities to monetize” the platform, he said. “All modern TVs have a dramatically higher luminance than what you would experience in a movie theater,” he said. “This increased brightness, when combined with HDR and larger screen sizes, further accentuates motion issues such as strobing, judder and deblur, all of which the TrueCut Motion platform solves without the viewer having to adjust any settings on their TV.”
The International Trade Commission voted Aug. 8 to open a modification proceeding on Google’s July 14 petition that Pixel smartphones, tablets, laptops and other devices installed with a new “device utility app” no longer infringe an October 2019 Sonos patent (10,439,896) on wirelessly connecting devices in a home network and should be removed from standing cease and desist and limited exclusion orders, said a notice for Friday’s Federal Register. Sonos filed an opposition to Google’s petition July 25, said the notice. The ITC has assigned the proceeding to Chief Administrative Law Judge Clark Cheney, who will render a “recommended determination” by Feb. 13, it said. Customs and Border Protection ruled in June that some Google device imports continued to infringe Sonos multiroom audio patents in violation of the ITC’s Jan. 6 import ban, ordering Google to disable the original device utility app in those devices and install a new app (see 2206290001).
The Disney+ ad-supported VOD tier, branded Disney+ Basic, goes live Dec. 8 at $7.99 a month with a “thoughtful approach by launching with a lower ad load and frequency,” said CEO Bob Chapek on an earnings call Wednesday for fiscal Q3 ended July 2 . The ad-free tier, Disney+ Premium, will increase to $10.99 from $7.99 when Disney+ Basic debuts.
Smart home security brand Arlo Technologies began the rollout this month of a targeted brand awareness campaign, themed “Protect Your Everything,” that focuses on “new household formation to drive incremental subscription revenue,” said CEO Matthew McRae on a Q2 earnings call Tuesday. Arlo expects the “bulk of the increase” in point-of-sale activity emanating from the campaign “to materialize in 2023,” said McRae, a former Vizio chief technology officer. Though Arlo products and services “regularly garner best-in-class accolades, the number one reason people don't buy Arlo products is because they have not heard of Arlo,” he said. Arlo also plans to expand the Arlo product portfolio “to address new segments and new markets,” he said. It’s debuting a new app, called Arlo Safe, to provide personal protection for an individual or entire family by offering “one-touch emergency health” and other safety features, he said. Arlo also plans to bow a new security system to bring “full sensor-based security functionality to our ecosystem of smart cameras,” he said. “Both of these provide significant opportunities to drive new subscriptions, and we expect these to be available before the end of the year.” Arlo is tracking macroeconomic trends closely, “and while they may portend a softness in consumer demand and higher execution risks in the second half of this year, our confidence in reaching our long-range-plan targets remains unchanged,” he said. Arlo revenue in Q2 was $119 million, up 21% year over year, and “well above the top end of our guidance,” said McRae. The company exited the quarter with $117 million in annualized recurring revenue from paid service accounts, up 67% from the 2021 quarter, he said.
Contrary to Google assertions in a complaint Monday against Sonos in U.S. District Court in San Francisco that it “rarely sues” other companies for patent infringement (see 2208090010), Google previously sued Sonos “all over the world and Sonos has prevailed in every decided case,” said Sonos Chief Legal Officer Eddie Lazarus in a statement Tuesday. “By contrast, the courts have repeatedly validated Sonos’ claims that Google is infringing its core patented smart speaker technology,” said Lazarus. Google’s new litigation is “an intimidation tactic designed to retaliate against Sonos for speaking out against Google’s monopolistic practices,” he said. Google has avoided paying Sonos “a fair royalty for the roughly 200 patents it is currently infringing,” and keeps attempting to “grind down a smaller competitor whose innovations it has misappropriated,” he said. “It will not succeed." Google followed through with threats to bring Sonos before the International Trade Commission, filing two complaints Tuesday (in dockets 337-3634 and 337-3635) alleging infringement of a total of seven patents. The complaints seek separate Tariff Act Section 337 investigations into the allegations. They ask for cease and desist and limited exclusion orders on Sonos audio players with Sonos Voice Control, plus those that support wired or wireless charging or the “commissioning of devices into a system via short-range transmissions.”
Despite ongoing global economic challenges and slower internet traffic growth, Akamai finished Q2 with revenue of $903 million, up 6% year over year and 9% higher in “constant currency,” said CEO Tom Leighton on a Tuesday earnings call. Q2 revenue in Akamai’s content delivery business declined 11% year over year to $417 million in results that were “clearly impacted by a continued deceleration in traffic growth among our largest media customers,” he said. “Like many companies, we're managing through a time of substantial economic headwinds and uncertainty with escalating inflation, the strengthening U.S. dollar, growing concerns about a global recession, escalating geopolitical tensions and conflicts and a slowing of internet traffic growth as the world tries to return to normal in the midst of a pandemic,” said Leighton.
PC demand within Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group (IDG) “is experiencing a short-term challenge, but people recognize the necessity of the PC as a key productivity tool,” said CEO Yang Yuanqing on an earnings call Wednesday for fiscal Q1 ended June 30. The total addressable market for PCs still “is expected to be much higher than pre-pandemic levels in the long term,” he said.
Though Google “rarely sues” other companies for patent infringement, “it must assert its intellectual property rights here,” said its complaint Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, alleging Sonos products infringe four Google voice control and wireless patents. The complaint extends a yearslong patent fight between the companies. “Google is proud of its multi-year partnership with Sonos, and has worked constructively with Sonos to make the companies’ products work seamlessly,” said the complaint. But Sonos reciprocated by making “false claims about the companies’ shared work and Google’s technology in the lawsuits that Sonos filed against Google,” it said. “Rather than compete on the basis of innovation and product quality, Sonos has decided to compete in the courtroom, and started an aggressive and misleading campaign against our products, at the expense of our shared customers,” emailed a Google spokesperson. “We prefer innovation to litigation but their actions leave us no choice but to defend our technology and challenge Sonos’s clear, continued infringement of our patents.” He confirmed Google plans to file a Tariff Act Section 337 complaint against Sonos at the International Trade Commission asserting allegations similar to those in the San Francisco complaint. Sonos didn’t comment Tuesday.
Qualcomm wants the FCC to “introduce the option” for broadcasters to use “5G Broadcast,” as an "alternative broadcast transmission standard” to ATSC 3.0 to beam over-the-air TV content to smartphones, because five years into 3.0's voluntary use, “broadcasters still lack the capability to reach on-the-go viewers via their mobile devices,” said the Snapdragon supplier in comments posted in docket 16-142. Comments were due Monday in the FCC’s NPRM on ATSC 3.0 deployment, including progress in broadcast and consumer adoption of the technology (see 2208090040). The agency’s June 22 rulemaking notice didn’t ask for public input on the progress to deploy 3.0 transmissions to mobile devices (see 2207060019), which Qualcomm correctly asserted don't exist. Qualcomm recommends the FCC “seek comment on implementation of the 5G Broadcast standard in this proceeding,” it said. “If allowed, this standard would provide mobile viewers with immersive broadcast content and critical public safety messages on their mobile devices when conventional broadcast alerting systems or cellular infrastructure are unavailable during a power outage,” it said. 5G Broadcast "would not replace ATSC 3.0 for fixed reception of television broadcast signals as the former technology targets mobility use case scenarios," said Qualcomm. 5G Broadcast "would complement the ATSC 3.0 services broadcasters are offering, reaching viewers wherever they are, including when they are out and about," it said. ATSC 3.0 “is not supported in mobile devices today” because a 3.0 modem “must be included in the mobile device along with additional hardware and software,” it said. 5G Broadcast, in contrast, “can be supported by mobile devices without any additional hardware,” it said. ATSC President Madeleine Noland said Tuesday she had no immediate comment "beyond that ATSC is reading through all of the submissions and may have an opinion to share after digesting what’s been written." Qualcomm was among several companies to oppose a commission mandate on 3.0 reception in smartphones in 2017, just before the FCC authorized 3.0's voluntary deployment for broadcasters; the commission never put such a mandate proposal on the table (see 1709200016). NPRM replies are due Sept. 6.
GlobalFoundries, similar to others in the chip industry, is seeing “some areas of the market beginning to rebalance supply and demand, including end markets such as low-end handsets, PCs and in general, the lower end of consumer electronics market,” said CEO Thomas Caulfield on a Q2 earnings call Tuesday. “Although we've experienced some decrease in some pockets of our unconstrained demand, the total demand for GF solutions remains robust and capacity continues to be oversubscribed.” In GF’s “fast-growing” end markets of home and industrial IoT, automotive, communications infrastructure and data center, “demand continues to outpace our ability to supply by about 10%,” he said. GF’s Q2 revenue of $1.99 billion was up 23% year over year, driven by increases in wafer shipments and average selling prices, he said. Caulfield bypassed Q&A so he could be at the White House for the signing of the chips bill (see 2208090062), he said: “This landmark legislation will have a profound positive impact on our nation, our industry and GF for years to come.”