Tough new rules proposed at the Department of Transportation for shipping lithium batteries on airplanes would seriously threaten distribution of the cells and the devices they power at a time when industry is trying to recover from the worst economic decline since the Great Depression, 34 companies and trade groups told the department by letter Thursday.
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
New Electronics Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) standards for TV sets and imaging products like copiers and scanners are being developed and probably will be released this year, Jeff Omelchuck, founder and director of the Green Electronics Council, which runs the EPEAT program, said Thursday at the Greener Gadgets conference in New York. Products based on the standards should reach store shelves by 2011, he said. Setting the standard, with the participation of many green groups and CE manufacturers, hasn’t been easy, Omelchuck said. “This is a really fascinating public dialogue among hundreds of people of very different backgrounds duking it out over what is practical, what is environmentally preferable for electronic products. It’s a very heated debate in many areas. It’s a very powerful process and it’s wearing many people out.” EPEAT started as a guide for “institutional” purchasers of electronics products to gauge which gear was the most environmentally sound, Omelchuck said. It’s quickly becoming the de facto “global green certification system” on electronics, yet “it’s relatively unknown” to consumers because it hasn’t been promoted, he said. It behooves consumers to give manufacturers “a reason to go green,” Omelchuck said. “Unless we as consumers demonstrate a purchasing preference for greener products, identified credibly and soundly” through programs like EPEAT, manufacturers “simply have no reason to do it,” he said.
Harman International won’t comment “on any aspect of the current discussions between Toyota and the U.S. Congress” on the sudden acceleration problems with Toyota vehicles, Harman spokesman Brad Hoffman told us in an e-mail Tuesday. Watchdog groups have singled out Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the wife of former Harman International Chairman Sidney Harman, as having a conflict of interest for sitting on the House Commerce Committee while owning more Toyota stock than any other member of Congress, according to her latest financial disclosure statement. It says she and her husband also own about $50 million of stock in Harman International, which supplies infotainment systems to Toyota. Jane Harman isn’t on the Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, so she didn’t take part in its hearing Tuesday on Toyota’s acceleration problem. Sidney Harman retired from Harman International’s board June 2008 and neither he nor his wife has “any management involvement in the company,” spokesman Hoffman told us. “Toyota is one of many global automakers served by Harman International, and its share of our business is not material,” Hoffman said. “We also serve such leading brands as Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Ferrari, Mercedes, Hyundai, Kia, Porsche, Rolls Royce and Volkswagen, each of which selects their suppliers based on technology leadership and global strengths. An estimated 20 million vehicles on the road today from automakers based in the U.S., Europe and Asia are equipped with Harman audio or infotainment systems.” In November, Harman International said it reached agreement with Toyota to install its new “scalable” infotainment systems in some European car models starting in 2011 (CED Nov 2 p7). Harman International CEO Dinesh Paliwal described the deal then as a “game changer” for his company, since the infotainment system will be in vehicles by 2011, rather than after the typical three-year design cycle. But Harman hasn’t disclosed how many or which Toyota models will have the system. Representatives of Jane Harman didn’t respond right away to requests for comment.
RANCHO BERNARDO, Calif. -- The increase in 3D movies scheduled for release in theaters this year only to 20 from 17 in 2009 implies that the studios are cautious “about producing a film and having no place to play it,” Sony Pictures Technologies President Chris Cookson told reporters at Sony Electronics’ headquarters Tuesday.
RANCHO BERNARDO, Calif. -- AV specialty retailers are “extremely important to the industry,” and will be “vital” to the success of home 3D, Sony Electronics Chief Marketing Officer Mike Fasulo told reporters in a briefing at Sony headquarters here Tuesday. His comments in Q-and-A came in the wake of last week’s demise of AV specialist MyerEmco and calls by the PRO Buying Group for vendors to be more specialist-friendly.
A proposal floated for months to end the legal fight over New York City’s e-waste program seems sure to get a new look now that CEA and the ITI Council have agreed with the city and the Natural Resources Defense Council to discuss a settlement (CED Feb 9 p1).
CEA and the ITI Council have begun settlement talks with New York City and its co-defendant, the Natural Resources Defense Council, aimed at resolving the manufacturers’ lawsuit that has stopped the city’s e-waste program from taking effect. Officials at CEA and the NRDC confirmed the talks. They said little more, citing the confidential nature of the discussions.
In stark evidence that Sony’s turnaround efforts of the last year may have taken hold, the company reported Thursday nearly a 700 percent increase in its net profit for its third quarter through December and a swing to a $1.6 billion operating profit, based on 92 yen to $1, from a loss a year earlier. The results, which Sony said “significantly exceeded expectations,” prompted the company to upgrade its full-year operating forecast. Sony said it still expects to finish the year with an operating loss, but of only half the size forecast in October.
CEA was “cautiously optimistic” to hear President Barack Obama call free trade agreements necessary in his State of the Union address and was “glad he confronted the issue again” when he met with House Republicans at their Baltimore retreat Friday, CEA President Gary Shapiro told us in an e- mail Monday. The U.S. needs “to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are,” Obama said in the State of the Union. “If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores. But realizing those benefits also means enforcing those agreements so our trading partners play by the rules. And that’s why we'll continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia.” Shapiro said that “our nation has been hurt by the failure by Congress to vote on the free trade agreements with three strong allies.” He continued, “The President recognized that the rest of the world is passing us by on free trade. Given our weak economy, this is a luxury we can no longer afford.” But concerning Obama’s call for enforcement mechanisms in new trade pacts, Shapiro said that “demanding all sorts of new clauses in these agreements to appease unions means that they may never be approved and the U.S. will continue to compete with higher tariffs.”
Panasonic Hollywood Lab in Universal City, Calif., is “first out of the gate” with a Blu-ray 3D authoring facility, it said Monday. The lab’s Advanced Authoring Center offers studios and film makers Blu-ray 3D image processing, interactive programming and authoring and disc certification services, “which are capable of making Blu-ray 3D discs commercially available as early as spring 2010,” the company said Monday. Meanwhile, in a clarification of our report that Panasonic Hollywood Lab would begin releasing Blu-ray 3D test discs to Blu-ray licensees on Feb. 15 (CED Feb 1 p1), Panasonic spokesman Jim Reilly said the discs will be released by actually Panasonic AVC Network Co.’s format verification lab.