Voxx beefed up consumer tech inventory “to allow for additional lead times in procurement and shipment,” and better serve customers amid continued supply chain disruptions, said CEO Pat Lavelle Tuesday on the company’s Q4 fiscal ’22 earnings call. Securing chips in FY ’23 “will continue to be challenging,” he said.

U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council negotiators, meeting over the weekend in Paris, agreed to set up an early warning “alert system” to share information about possible disruptions in the semiconductor supply chain, and “incentivize increased production” of chips, said the group in a joint statement Monday. The TTC also agreed to put a “mechanism” in place to avoid chip “subsidy races” among local governments, it said.

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., will meet with ranking member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Monday afternoon for renewed privacy negotiations, a committee member told us last week.

China has a growing presence in telecom standards bodies like the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, but experts said during a USTelecom webinar Thursday that the U.S. still has significant influence. Experts agreed the election of American Doreen Bogdan-Martin as ITU secretary-general is important to the development of industry-led standards (see 2205110039). The President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) is scheduled to vote at a May 24 meeting on a draft letter to the president on standards.

Vizio’s “dual-revenue business model” and an “aggressive pricing strategy” implemented in Q1 on select TV models “paid off,” said CEO William Wang on an earnings call Thursday. Hardware revenue in the quarter fell 16% year on year to $382.9 million on an 11% decline in TV shipments, the company reported Thursday. Vizio was the second-leading TV brand in March in the U.S., he said.

As predicted, Snap One will institute another price hike (see 2203230053) June 6 in an “evolving pricing strategy” to address rising supply chain costs, “competitive forces” and “affordability of solutions,” said CEO John Heyman on an earnings call Thursday for Q1 ended April 1.

The war in Ukraine, plus rising inflation and rolling COVID-19 lockdowns throughout China, “have significantly impacted the supply chain and consumer electronics demand, leading to a particularly abnormal business environment,” said Himax Technologies CEO Jordan Wu on a Q1 earnings call Thursday. The company supplies display-driver chips to major panel makers, and its financial performance can be a bellwether of health in the display industry. Its stock closed 13.2%. higher Friday at $9.41

Product backlogs persist at Sonos “and will cost us a little more than we had previously expected,” said CEO Patrick Spence on the company’s Wednesday Q2 FY 2022 earnings call, citing increased component and logistics costs.

Nearly three years after it bought Paris-based voice technology company Snips for $37.5 million (see 1911210045), Sonos announced a proprietary voice experience for all mic-equipped Sonos speakers. CEO Patrick Spence underscored privacy in announcing the Sonos-dedicated voice feature on a Wednesday earnings call, saying voice commands are done entirely on the Sonos speaker or sound bar, with no audio or conversation transcript “sent to the cloud, stored, listened to or read by anyone.”

Doreen Bogdan-Martin remains the front-runner to be elected ITU secretary-general at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, which starts Sept. 26, but industry officials who have been trying to count votes say nothing is guaranteed. Some warned of "ripple effects" if Russian nominee Rashid Ismailov is elected, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The vote comes a year ahead of the next World Radiocommunications Conference.