STANFORD, Calif. -- The actions that made Microsoft the target of antitrust authorities internationally didn’t compare with some of the practices of dominant technology players today, said General Counsel Brad Smith. “One can only imagine the volcanic uproar” if Microsoft had run an app store in which the company “alone would control” the software accepted for distribution and from which applications that competed with offerings by the company had been excluded, he said late Friday at an antitrust symposium hosted by Stanford Law School and the American Bar Association.

Trans World Entertainment completed its restructuring, having closed 133 unprofitable f.y.e., Suncoast Motion Picture Co. and Saturday Matinee stores to shrink the chain to 576 outlets, Chief Financial Officer John Sullivan told us.

Natural Resources Canada rejected a proposal by TV manufacturers to accept the FTC’s proposed energy use label for TVs instead of its own. Sets will resemble bulletin boards if countries and jurisdictions mandate their own energy use labels for the sets, TV makers told NRCan. The Canadian agency is proposing an EnerGuide label for TVs along the lines of the EnergyGuide label being considered by the FTC. Besides the FTC, California is requiring its own energy use label, the manufacturers said on a conference call. Since what Canada is proposing is similar to what the U.S. is considering, “we question the reason for having two labels,” a Sony representative said.

Tech and advertising groups prefer the Senate financial overhaul bill passed late Thursday to the House version, they said Friday. The groups have voiced concerns about the FTC expansion envisioned by the House bill, among other things (CED May 5 p5). But so far, few Capitol Hill legislators have commented directly on the tech community’s concerns.

Dell CEO Michael Dell played down the significance of the iPad’s popularity and rival Hewlett-Packard’s plan to buy Palm, in an earnings call. He also sidestepped a question on whether Dell plans to make an acquisition in the mobile device space. Instead, Dell said, “One of the most immediate opportunities we see with all of the users coming online is the tremendous build-out of the data centers to feed all that data."

Pandigital is plunging into the e-reader market with a two-pronged strategy in which it will field LCD- and electrophoretic display (EPD)-based models, retailers told us. Best known for its digital photo frames, Pandigital’s PRD07T20WBL1 Novel e-reader ($199) is expected to hit retail shelves around June 10, featuring a seven-inch color LCD with 800x600 resolution, 220 nits brightness and WiFi for connecting to Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore. Assembled by Foxconn, the Android-based Novel e-reader contains an 800 MHz Samsung Arm-11 processor, 1 GB of internal memory and an SD slot for storage of up to 32 GB. Novel contains 1,600-milliampere lithium ion battery with a six-hour run time, Pandigital Assistant Vice President Jason Topel told us in an interview.

TV makers, not retailers, should be responsible for affixing energy use labels on products, the CE Retailers Coalition told the FTC. The commission has started a rulemaking process on requiring EnergyGuide labels for TVs and other CE products.

CE makers are seeking a blanket waiver to exempt mobile DTV devices from FCC Part 15 requirements that all TV devices include analog and legacy ATSC DTV tuners. Dell and LG filed a joint petition, seeking a waiver for battery-operated mobile devices. Separately, Hauppauge Computer Works sought a broader waiver to cover any “television receivers capable of mobile use by consumers” that has a mobile DTV receiver. Comments on both requests, which the commission will consider together, are due June 4 under an accelerated process. Replies are due June 11.

Intel is “putting all our energy” into “working with Google on enabling” Sony and Logitech TV products based on the Android operating system (CED May 21 p5) to be sold at retail this year, Eric Kim, senior vice president and general manager for Intel’s Digital Home Group, said on a phone and Internet briefing for investors Friday. But he said, “We are also very deeply engaged with many other major CE OEMs, so you could expect there to be many additional CE products -- TVs, set-top boxes, media players -- hitting the retail shelves in spring of 2011.” He declined to name other OEMs, citing “very strict confidentiality” deals, but said Intel is “definitely putting a huge amount of energy to scale this out very, very rapidly."

"We continue to deal with product shortages” on the PS3, GameStop interim Chief Financial Officer Robert Lloyd said on a Thursday earnings call. The problem was so bad in Q1 ended May 1 that the retailer, “on an average daily basis,” was out of stock on Sony’s console “80 percent of the time” at its U.S. stores, Chief Operating Officer Paul Raines said.