Big Tech’s entry into payment services could strengthen platform monopoly power, FTC Chair Lina Khan and consumer advocates told the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in comments last week.
CTA President Gary Shapiro thinks CES 2022 “will be awesome!!!” he said in a Facebook exchange with Robin Raskin, founder of the Life in Digital Times conference that CTA now owns. CES 2022 will have “a little less glitz, a few messy gaps but cool stuff from thousands of entrepreneurs,” said Shapiro.
The Connectivity Standards Alliance will have certification and testing tools mid-year for the nascent Matter standard when the specification and software development kit are formally released, blogged Jon Harros, CSA director-certification and testing programs, Tuesday. The standard will allow disparate IoT devices from participating CSA member manufacturers to communicate with one another over IP-based transports, Harros said, “effectively eliminating many of the walls in the current IoT walled garden ecosystem.”
The FCC and Wi-Fi advocates notched a win in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Tuesday, which upheld the agency’s April 2020 order reallocating the 6 GHz band for unlicensed use. The court remanded part of the order for more explanation. Judge Justin Walker, a new member of the court, had warned the order could be remanded or even vacated, and the FCC faced tough questions during oral argument in September (see 2109170057).
The International Trade Commission should issue its “standard limited exclusion order” (LEO) banning from U.S. import all Google smart speakers and other infringing products “within the scope of the investigation” that found Google guilty of Tariff Act Section 337 violations, said Sonos in redacted Dec. 10 comments posted Wednesday in public docket 337-TA-1191. The ITC should “explicitly identify and carve out” from the import ban any Google products and redesigns not found to have infringed five Sonos multiroom audio patents, said Google’s reply.
Christmas week hiatus for many companies appears to have slowed the cadence of CES 2022 withdrawals from in-person participation at the Jan. 5-8 event in Las Vegas amid the sharp spike nationally in COVID-19 cases from the omicron variant. CES 2022 lost at least its second featured in-person keynoter when General Motors confirmed Thursday that CEO Mary Barra would still appear in her Jan. 5 time slot at 9 a.m. on the show’s opening morning, but only digitally. T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert withdrew as a keynoter earlier in the week, saying he wouldn't speak even virtually, and would keep the “vast majority” of the T-Mobile team at home.
The HDMI Forum unveiled HDMI 2.1a on a videoconference Tuesday designed to replace its annual CES media day event. HDMI Licensing Administrator CEO Brad Bramy said the decision to cancel a physical CES 2022 presence was made months ago when it was determined that a large contingent of their international HDMI adopters, manufacturers and media partners wouldn't go to Las Vegas in January.
A growing number of localities are suing video streaming platforms seeking franchise fees, and more lawsuits are expected in 2022. Tax experts think such suits face legal difficulties. Netflix and Hulu, typically the defendants of such suits, didn't comment.
BlackBerry is still chasing a deal to sell the portion of its patent portfolio involving mobile devices, messaging and wireless networking and other “noncore” businesses, said CEO John Chen on an investor call Tuesday with analysts for fiscal Q3 ended Nov. 30. BlackBerry failed in the quarter to seal a definitive agreement with a potential buyer, as Chen predicted it would on a Sept. 22 call (see 2109230002).
Newly promoted Samsung Electronics CEO Jong-Hee Han will use his CES 2022 keynote the evening of Jan. 4 at the Venetian's Palazzo Ballroom to discuss collaborations “with industry experts and partners to create a truly enhanced connected experience,” he blogged Wednesday. Han's commitment to forge ahead with his in-person keynote came as T-Mobile, Amazon, Twitter and other names big and small were abandoning travel to CES in Las Vegas for their health and safety amid spiking COVID-19 cases and the rapid spread of the omicron variant.