SVS CEO Gary Yacoubian wants people to imagine waking up one morning, and finding "your cost of goods just went up by 15%” overnight, he told a CES 2022 trade and supply chain workshop Wednesday on the Section 301 tariffs on finished speakers and subwoofers that SVS imports from China. Speakers and subwoofers with List 4A tariff exposure were originally dutied at 10% when they took effect in September 2019 (see 1908160014), and were later raised to 15%, then cut to 7.5% with the February 2020 enactment of the phase one trade deal with China.

The fight over the C band shows a recurring pattern on spectrum decisions, with agencies and incumbents raising new objections after the FCC makes a decision, officials said during a CES 5G panel, streamed from Las Vegas Thursday. “We shouldn’t see agencies fighting on CNN,” said Asad Ramzanali, legislative director to Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif.: “That’s not a good thing.” None of the FCC commissioners attended CES. Commissioner Nathan Simington was scheduled to speak on the 5G panel but was unable to attend, officials said.

Dolby Labs violated the Sherman Antitrust Act when it reneged on its promises to ATSC to license its Dolby AC-4 audio codec patents for NextGenTV on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms, alleged LG Electronics in a heavily redacted memorandum of law in support of its motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Dolby, as posted Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in docket 1:22-cv-42. The court granted LG’s Dec. 23 application to file its complaint against Dolby under seal (see 2112240001), and the docket says the court locked the sealed complaint in a vault Tuesday.

Verizon has no doubts it will be able to start turning on its C band in two weeks, after reaching an agreement with the FAA and aviation industry (see 2201040070), said Chief Technology Officer Kyle Malady at a Citi virtual conference Wednesday. “This is the final agreement,” he said: “We feel this is it.” The presentation was the first by a top Verizon official since the agreement was unveiled.

Samsung CEO Jong-Hee Han cited the importance of sustainability initiatives, “purposeful partnerships,” and customizable and connected technologies, in his pre-CES keynote Tuesday from the Venetian's Palazzo Ballroom.

The COVID-19 omicron variant will bring “uncertainty” to the economy in 2022, and could contribute to inflation, but it's “unlikely to cause widespread shutdowns or slowdowns” due to its “relatively mild” effects for fully vaccinated individuals, said National Retail Federation Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz Wednesday. Each successive COVID-19 variant has slowed the economy, but “the degree of slowdown has been less” with each one, he noted.

CTA President Gary Shapiro, in his state of the industry stump speech Wednesday before a live audience in the Venetian’s Palazzo Ballroom to open CES 2022, dispensed with his customary list of association policy and standards objectives, instead imploring political leaders to help the private sector nurture technology innovation or get out of the tech industry’s way. General Motors CEO Mary Barra, who until two weeks ago was to have taken the same CES keynote stage but withdrew for COVID-19's omicron health and safety reasons (see 2112270040), delivered her hourlong remarks on GM’s electric-vehicle initiatives via video she recorded in an empty Fox Theatre in Detroit.

Jumbo screen sizes, updated motion technology, features for gamers and competitive pricing headlined TCL’s 2022 TV lineup on the company’s prerecorded CES news conference Tuesday. TCL is working with Pixelworks and other entertainment companies to define and deploy TrueCut Motion, a new “motion ecosystem,” said Aaron Dew, senior director-product development. Describing TrueCut Motion as “holistic,” Dew said it gives content creators a new tool to “dynamically use motion to better express style, to immerse viewers in stories and to elicit emotion."

Laser TV took center stage in Hisense’s virtual CES news conference, presented live from Mandalay Bay via a YouTube feed Tuesday.The Chinese brand will display 8K laser TV for the first time publicly this week at its Central Hall booth at CES, using a Hisense-developed 8K 120-Hz image-quality chip that can support 20,000 Mini-LED backlight partitions, said former LG executive David VanderWaal, recently named Hisense vice president-marketing, Americas.

Verizon and AT&T agreed to a further two-week delay, until Jan. 19, in turning on their C-band spectrum for 5G, while taking other actions to address air safety, consistent with the model for deployments in France. The agreement will protect air safety, President Joe Biden said in a statement. Industry observers said the carriers, government regulators and the airlines appear close to a final resolution, though questions remain.