Cisco’s decision to drop Flip camcorders (CED April 13 p7) is already enabling DXG to expand retail distribution for its camcorders, Paul Goldberg, DXG USA senior vice president of marketing and sales, told Consumer Electronics Daily. DXG is perhaps better positioned than most rivals to land new accounts because its camcorders, like Flip models, are typically low-priced alternatives to products from Sony and other CE giants. But Goldberg thinks Cisco’s move was “pretty sad,” he said, saying some friends at Cisco lost jobs as a result.

Nintendo of America (NOA) denied that its 3DS and Wii videogame systems and related products infringed on Creative Kingdoms patents. Its comment Thursday was one day after the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) said it voted to institute an investigation into whether Nintendo’s videogame systems, as well as wireless controllers and components for them, infringed on patents owned by Creative Kingdoms and its New Kingdoms subsidiary.

The Japan earthquake and tsunami had no significant impact on Apple’s results in Q2 ended March 26, Chief Operating Officer Timothy Cook said in an earnings call. There was “some revenue impact,” but “it was not material to” Apple’s results, he said. Apple didn’t experience “any supply or cost impact in our fiscal Q2 as a result of the tragedy, and we currently do not anticipate any material supply or cost impact” in Q3, he said.

Lawmakers are asking Apple for answers following the discovery that its iPod and iPad devices are regularly storing a list of its users’ locations. The findings were revealed Wednesday by Alasdair Allan, a senior research fellow at the University of Exeter, and Pete Warden, a former Apple programmer and founder of OpenHeatMap.com. The researchers claim “there’s no immediate harm” from the data records, but lawmakers are up in arms about the privacy implications of the discovery.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook, Apple, Twitter and Amazon flunked under at least one yardstick in a study that Greenpeace released Thursday of 10 high-tech companies and 47 of their data centers, how clean their energy sources are and how much information is released on the subject. There’s a “lack of transparency in the IT sector” about the kinds of energy used, with companies keeping much of the information confidential, said Greenpeace analyst Gary Cook at the Green:Net conference.

After a five-month sales and marketing hiatus, Colorado vNet is planning to launch three products in Q2, Russound CEO Charlie Porritt told Consumer Electronics Daily during a press tour in Manhattan Thursday. Porritt confirmed it will deliver a media streamer using Autonomic Controls’ technology (CED April 19 p4) as part of a 2011 new product trio that will be available to dealers in the next 60 days.

Toshiba America Information Systems (TAIS) merged with Toshiba’s CE sales group, cutting six jobs, including Vice President Jim Donahue, in a deepening of a restructuring that began last summer (CED July 8 p1), sources close to the company said. TAIS staff will handle sales for CE and PC products and the number of U.S. sales regions was reduced to two from three as Kenneth Kelty, northeastern U.S. sales director, was laid off, sources said. Account managers Daniel Flannery, whose responsibility included American TV and Abt Electronics, Trude Haines (Video Only), Eric Lohsl and John Paris (P.C. Richard) also were dismissed, sources said.

The CE industry must concentrate on boosting e-waste recycling efforts in the states that don’t have e-waste laws and “bring them up to the collection rates” in the 25 states that mandate electronics recycling, said Sego Jackson, principal planner of Snohomish County, Wash. Jackson, who represented local governments on the EPA-led National Electronic Product Stewardship Initiative, was commenting on the CEA’s launch of an industry-led national e-waste initiative that aims to collect 1 billion pounds of used electronics by 2016.

Virgin Media will spread TiVo across all its products and services, preferring the higher margins it delivers to those generated by over-the-top providers like Netflix, Virgin CEO Neil Berkett said in a conference call. Virgin began last week connecting the 65,000 customers that pre-registered for TiVo and so far has installed in the “single digit” thousands of units, a company spokesman told us. Virgin is charging new customers $279 for the 1 terabyte DVR, $246 for existing subscribers plus $66 for installation. TiVo carries $4.95 premium for the XL TV package.

Videogame retailers again fared best among entertainment retailers and movie theaters in the enforcement of ratings as part of the latest secret shopper survey by the FTC, it reported Wednesday. Game retailers “continue to enforce most vigorously the ratings governing age and content that were established by the entertainment media industry,” it said.