The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative can’t demonstrate good cause for a Section 301 remand deadline extension “that would leave uncured its established legal violation for another two months to the continuing detriment of American businesses and consumers,” said Akin Gump lawyers for Section 301 litigation test plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products in an opposition brief Tuesday at the U.S. Court of International Trade in docket 1:21-cv-52.
Even in an uncertain economy, “every business continues to prioritize its digital investment,” said Anil Chakravarthy, Adobe president-digital experience, on an earnings call Thursday for fiscal Q2 ended June 3. June’s Adobe digital index report, which leverages “trillions of data points” from Adobe analytics, found consumers spent a billion dollars more online in May than in April, he said. Shoppers year to date have spent more than $377 billion online, “roughly 9% more than the same period last year,” he said.
With less than two weeks to spare before the June 30 deadline for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to file its remand results in the Section 301 litigation, the agency needs a 60-day extension to Aug. 29 due to the volume of work involved, the agency’s limited staff resources and other projects that are compounding its workload, said DOJ’s motion Friday in docket 1:21-cv-52 at the U.S. Court of International Trade. Akin Gump lawyers for test-case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products oppose the motion and will soon file a response, said DOJ. Matthew Nicely, Akin Gump’s lead attorney, declined comment Friday.
The 50-50 Charter-Comcast joint venture to develop a national streaming platform on branded 4K streaming devices and smart TVs (see 2206170008) brings together two “legacy cable providers” that have “an aptitude for the aggregation side,” plus lots of “interactions with consumers who are at the point where they're considering video products,” Charter Chief Financial Officer Jessica Fischer told a Credit Suisse investors conference Wednesday. “When you click that together with what really Comcast has created, it's a world-class platform that we can deploy fully across a national footprint,” she said. “Our opportunity to sort of reach scale there and to do so pretty quickly is very good.” Charter’s cable subscriptions have “shrunk more slowly” than those of “some of our peers” because “we're always looking to provide the packages that consumers want,” said Fischer. The offering with Comcast “enables us to sort of do that even more broadly, whether consumers want linear, whether they want streaming, whether they want skinny, whether they want fully loaded,” she said. “We're going to be in a place to pull together what it is that consumers are looking for.”
General Motors is well on its way toward achieving production of a million electric vehicles in North America by 2025, Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson told a Deutsche Bank investor conference Wednesday. The supply chain “is making great progress,” he said. “You may see, from time to time, plants coming down for a period of time as we continue to lean in and accelerate that journey. We're trying to manage that in the context of everything going on with chips” and logistics, he said. There are “lots of reasons to be excited in spite of some of the challenges that we might see in the short term,” he said. GM is still “very much in line” with its targets of 25% to 30% EV unit volume growth year over year, he said.
Revenue in Jabil’s diversified manufacturing services (DMS) business, which includes automotive, connected devices and mobility products, increased 7% in fiscal Q3 ended May 31, said the contract manufacturer Thursday. That the revenue growth was about 10 points below Jabil’s March guidance shows the impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai and persistent component shortages, said CEO Mark Mondello on a quarterly earnings call.
U.S. electronics and appliances retail sales are projected to grow 5.9% year over year in the back-to-school period July 14-Sept. 5, reported Mastercard’s SpendingPulse service Tuesday. It forecast 17.6% sales growth in the electronics sector compared with the same pre-COVID-19 pandemic period in 2019.
It’s unclear whether tech companies that challenge New York’s new right-to-repair legislation in the courts would sue right away or wait closer to the effective date a year after Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signs the measure into law before taking action, said a lawyer familiar with the legislation. “There’s nothing in the constitution that says states can’t regulate interstate commerce,” said the lawyer on background. “It just gives that authority to the Congress and by implication, states are not allowed to go outside of their boundaries” by impairing or creating an undue burden on interstate commerce, said the lawyer. The New York bill was written carefully to say that it applies only to products or equipment sold in New York or to repair providers that operate in New York, said the attorney. But there's already talk among right-to-repair advocates about the wider-ranging interstate commerce implications of the New York law, including those who say nothing would stop a consumer or independent repair shop from buying the parts from a New York entity and having them shipped to California (see 2206060031). Other advocates have cautioned that a legal challenge to the law is a virtual certainty. CTA, then doing business as the Consumer Electronics Association, went to court in 2009, seeking an injunction against New York City’s e-waste law on grounds it illegally exceeded the authority of the city to regulate interstate commerce by violating the Dormant Commerce Clause doctrine of constitutional law (see 0907280100). The complaint argued the program violated the doctrine by imposing burdens on interstate commerce that far outweighed the local benefits to city residents. The suit was withdrawn about two years later when New York enacted a statewide e-waste law that superseded the door-to-door collections require in the city law. CTA didn’t respond to queries seeking comment on its ambitions to challenge New York’s right-to-repair law in the courts.
How well ATSC 3.0 performs commercially “is up to us in this room and the companies we represent,” CTA CEO Gary Shapiro told ATSC’s NextGen Broadcast Conference Thursday in Detroit. “It could be a total flop, or it could be a great success,” he said. He told the conference broadcasters will need to “promote the heck” out of 3.0 for it to become a commercial success (see 2206090065).
For ATSC 3.0 to become a commercial success, broadcasters “have to promote the heck out of it,” CTA CEO Gary Shapiro told the NextGen Broadcast Conference Thursday in Detroit. Shapiro spoke in person on a panel with NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt, who participated via Zoom because, he said, his wife tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday. Shapiro said he tested positive a few weeks ago.