Joy introduced a COVID-19 “wedding calculator” to help adjust marriage plans. It gives couples an “overview” of adjustments to consider, including possible scheduling, guest count and venue changes, said the wedding tech company Tuesday. The company estimates nearly half of 2020 U.S. weddings were postponed to next year, it said: "We expect that by the end of July, 75 percent of 2020 weddings will be postponed to 2021."

New Jersey legislators supported extending an emergency telehealth law and executive order until 90 days after the end of the COVID-19 crisis. The Assembly voted 73-0 Monday to send S-2467 to Gov. Phil Murphy (D), whose office declined comment Tuesday. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) signed an executive order Monday trimming a previous telehealth EO because the legislature had codified some parts of it.

Calendar 2020 estimates for “end-unit” sales of smartphones are “meaningfully lower” than pre-COVID-19, “even though estimates for enterprise laptops and Chromebooks have increased,” said Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra. “Reduced level of global economic activity has also curtailed near-term demand.” The pandemic's impact on Micron’s production early in Q3, which ended May 28, was limited to two “back-end assembly and test sites” in Malaysia, he told investors Monday. See here for Q3 details.

Q1 smartphone panel revenue grew 3% globally, topping $9 billion, reported Strategy Analytics Monday. Samsung Display's revenue share was 51.8% in smartphone panels, followed by BOE (14.3%) and Tianma (8.2%), SA said. "We expect the display panel market to continue to observe a slowdown in smartphone panel demand due to disruptions in supply chains of customers along with a strong decline in demand for end-market products owing to COVID-19 pandemic.”

Automakers' enhanced connected car “functionalities” can help stem COVID-19's spread, reported Gartner Monday: Automated door locks and engine start/stop actions using a smartphone app “can reduce surface contact inside the vehicle.”

The COVID-19 pandemic is harming Sony “production, development, sale and distribution” of products and services in all segments, said the company’s annual report posted Monday at the SEC, saying Sony expects “this negative impact” to continue well into the future, but it doesn’t risk delaying the holiday launch of the PlayStation 5. Sony-owned factories in China and Thailand making digital cameras and smartphones “are currently operating as usual,” it said. Sony’s retail sales are down “significantly due to the closure of retail stores globally,” said the report. Work-from-home orders and the ban on international flights due to the coronavirus “presented some challenges” in bringing the PS5 to market in time for the holiday, said the report. Sony encountered delays in the PS5 “testing process and the qualification of production lines,” it said. Development is “progressing” well, and “no major problems have arisen in the game software development pipeline,” it said.

Sheltering-at-home spurred a record number of consumers to experiment with over-the-top video, reported Parks Associates Monday. The churn rate for OTT services grew to 41% in Q1 from 35% in Q1 2019. During the COVID-19 pandemic, more than two in five U.S. broadband households trialed an OTT service, and 8% of U.S. broadband households surveyed subscribed to at least one new OTT service. Stay-at-home orders helped newcomers Disney+ and Apple TV+ beef up their subscriber rosters in Q1, with 49% of new OTT subscribers joining Disney and 27% picking up Apple TV+, Parks said. A key question is whether subscribers will keep these service, said analyst Steve Nason. “A significant challenge, especially for services relying on original programming, is delivering new content since production on many series has halted.”

Despite concerns networks might buckle under the strain of a sustained spike in internet traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic, Comcast’s network averaged “above-advertised speeds," blogged Chief Network Officer Jan Hofmeyr Monday. As part of a $12 billion investment, Comcast has doubled capacity every 2.5 years, said the executive. In March and April, Comcast added more than 35 terabits per second peak capacity to regional network facilities and 1,700 100-gigabit links to the core network vs. 500 in the year-ago period. It invested in pushing fiber to customers’ homes, Hofmeyr said.

Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Tom Carper, D-Del., urged the FCC, DOJ and IRS Friday to “aggressively” crack down on robocall scams about the COVID-19 pandemic. They wrote FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, Attorney General Bill Barr and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig: “Government and industry should always cooperate to fight illegal robocalls, but it is even more critical at a time when so many Americans are facing economic and health concerns.” The senators’ letter to Pai noted FCC recent actions, including a $225 million fine against robocall businesses Rising Eagle Capital and JSquared Telecom and their principals (see 2006090044). Only “a negligible amount of the hundreds of millions of dollars in FCC-levied fines against robocallers since 2015 have been actually been collected by” DOJ, the senators said. “This poor track record raises concerns that scammers using robocalls to deceive consumers and exploit anxiety associated with the COVID-19 public health emergency will be able to act without significant fear of reprisal, and never made to disgorge the ill-gotten proceeds.” The lawmakers sought recommendations whether further legislation is needed “to ensure that the FCC and DOJ work closer together and actually recoup fines that the FCC levies against robocallers.” They want to know whether six gateway providers the FCC and FTC contacted in April (see 2004030052) have cut traffic allowing pandemic-related scam robocalls originating outside the country into the U.S. The two agencies sent a second round of letters to the providers in May (see 2005200053). The FCC, DOJ and IRS didn’t comment.

With more employees working from home now, and possibly beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, home network security is a growing concern, experts told a webinar with cybersecurity company Bitdefender. Nearly 80% of U.S. consumers surveyed by Parks Associates are concerned about a data security break or privacy issues, said analyst Brad Russell. The increasing time households are spending on their Wi-Fi networks heightened home network exposure to phishing attacks, Russell noted. WFH puts the home network “in a completely different spotlight,” said Alex Balan, Bitdefender chief security researcher. Bitdefender is tracking 350 IoT-oriented botnets in its labs that are compromising such smart home devices as routers, power outlets, smart cameras, printers, smart TVs and connected coffee makers. Eventually, all devices in the home will be connected and the number of attacks on home networks will “dramatically expand,” said Balan. Vulnerabilities are present in 90% of the devices Bitdefender analyzes, he said, and are “very difficult to defend against.” Consumers can’t buy anti-virus software “for a smart light bulb or a Roomba,” he said. “You don’t know how to tackle security for your smart devices.” The average broadband household has 22 devices, up from 12-15 two years ago, said Razvan Todor, Bitdefender director-connected home security, and that will keep growing. “We’ve just now become painfully aware that we need to protect them,” ideally from a single point, said Todor. ISPs can help with cybersecurity, while clearing up their networks with fewer distributed denial-of-service attacks, experts said.