Becoming a major player in the U.S. market has always been an objective in Italy-based Nice’s long-term plans, emailed Nortek Control CEO Edoardo Malfe after Nice’s purchase of Nortek last week for $285 million (see 2110050066). The purchase doubled Nice’s R&D capabilities, now at 16 centers globally, Malfe said, as the company looks to “develop integrated solutions for our customers that simplify their everyday movements.” Malfe was Nice's vice president-global operations before the purchase.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. expects customers and the supply chain to “gradually” build a “higher level of inventory” at least for the rest of 2021, compared with “historical” trends, “given that the industry continually needs to ensure supply security,” said CEO C.C. Wei on a Q3 earnings call Thursday. The world’s largest foundry reported $14.88 billion in Q3 revenue, up 22.6% year over year and 12% higher sequentially than Q2.

Voxx has a “great deal of optimism” for FY 2022, after navigating the "global turmoil" of components shortages and supply chain bottlenecks, said CEO Pat Lavelle on a Wednesday call, reporting fiscal Q2 earnings. The company instituted two price increases to address higher supply chain costs -- the latest in September to offset a steep hike in container pricing -- and has the inventory "on hand to deliver in our all-important third quarter," he said.

There’s no “silver bullet” for resolving the ransomware “crisis,” Brandon Wales, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security, told an Axios webinar Wednesday. There’s more the government can and should do “to help arm” U.S. businesses “with the kind of information that will allow them to protect their networks,” he said.

5G remains a theoretical competitive threat to cable, not an actual one, though additional midband and millimeter wave spectrum and new entrants like Dish Network could change that, cable operators and allies said Tuesday at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2021.

Tough comparisons with August 2020, the fifth full month of COVID-19 lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, were evident in the double-digit year-over-year declines in August imports of TVs, smartphones and laptops and tablets, according to Census Bureau data accessed Monday through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb portal.

“It’s time,” Audio Video Systems executive Franklin Karp told Consumer Electronics Daily, after he announced his retirement Friday from the Plainview, New York-based custom integration firm after 15 years, effective Dec. 31 (see 2110080048). Calling his decision to leave the firm “amicable and nice,” Karp said it will be “my honor” to be at the company’s disposal, but it’s time for new management to take AVS forward “for the next 15 years.”

China-U.S. economic and trade relations “are essentially mutually beneficial,” said a Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson when asked Friday about remarks by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai that the Biden administration wants to reengage Beijing in new rounds of trade talks and hold China accountable for its commitments under the January 2020 phase one trade agreement (see 2110040025). “There is no winner in a trade war,” said the spokesperson.

A Thursday Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing showed there's bipartisan support for a “strong telehealth initiative” that the Commerce and Health committees could together advance to the Senate floor this year, said subpanel Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., in an interview. Lawmakers noted interest in advancing the Temporary Reciprocity to Ensure Access to Treatment Act (HR-708/S-168) and Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies for Health Act (HR-2903/S-1512), among other telehealth measures. Lujan and others also used the hearing to promote the need for further broadband money and air grievances about President Joe Biden’s delay in announcing nominees to the FCC and NTIA.

A national digital authority to rein in big tech companies proposed by Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., got support from Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan (D) and some privacy experts at a National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) event Friday. Panelists supported state privacy work until consensus around federal privacy legislation can form.