Sigma Designs shareholders of record through Aug. 3 will get a final payout of 28 cents a share under a board-approved plan to finish liquidating and dissolving the company. The former Z-Wave owner and once-formidable SoC supplier -- it was the first to announce Dolby Vision support in September 2014 (see 1409040067) -- “has been working to wind down all of its operations and resolve all outstanding creditor claims,” it said Friday. Shareholders approved the liquidation plan more than two years ago, but phasing out Sigma subsidiaries in Europe and Asia “has taken longer than originally anticipated,” it said. The final distribution of $11.4 million will bring to $252 million “the total amount of cash returned to shareholders,” it said.

Nielsen expects to save $250 million annually by exiting “several smaller, underperforming markets and non-core businesses” and cutting 3,500 jobs, about 8% of the global workforce, said the company Tuesday. Nielsen expects to incur up to $170 million in 2020 pretax restructuring charges, about half attributable to severance costs, it said. The downsizing should be “substantially completed” this year, it said. It plans to provide more detail on its Q2 call Aug. 3, it said. The company closed 2019 with about 46,000 employees, said its Feb. 27 annual report.

Voxx's EyeLock teamed with Integral Technology Solutions on biometric fingerprint and iris authentication solutions for the medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural and food processing industries. This covers the North American and European markets, said Voxx Thursday.

Como Audio raised $80,550 from 107 investors by Tuesday in its 90-day equity crowdfunding campaign for a U.S. factory to build music systems. The campaign is intended to bring a factory to the Boston area, where DeVesto’s previous audio companies were headquartered, to reduce dependence on “foreign manufacturing.” The company’s minimum goal was $10,000 with a top end of $478,000. The Start Engine campaign has 85 days left; minimum investment is $250.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen acknowledges it was “a rough year for our share price and our equity value,” but he and the board are “extremely bullish about our going-forward plan,” he told the company’s annual shareholder meeting virtually Tuesday. The ambition is to become the “must-have software provider for endpoints,” said Chen. BlackBerry sees a $38 billion market opportunity in helping “people that build devices” for the smart home or smart city, he said. The compound annual growth rate of the software business has been about 20% the past four years, said Chen. “We're pretty pleased with that number,” but “we're working very hard to make it higher than that,” he said. The “technology lab” was created about a year ago, he said. “We’ve done a lot of good stuff,” including the automotive cybersecurity tech it demonstrated at CES to “predict certain fault conditions in the car,” he said. Shares closed 3.5% lower Wednesday at $4.92.

Logitech will list the carbon footprint on its product labels so consumers can see the environmental impact of their purchasing decisions, said the company Wednesday. The initiative is part of the company’s commitment to sustainability, said CEO Bracken Darrell. Last year, Logitech neutralized the carbon in its gaming product line, announced support of the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius and committed that it will be powered exclusively by renewable electricity by 2030.

Jon Kirchner will head the new Xperi, following completion of the Xperi-TiVo merger June 1, and Samir Armaly, whose tenure at TiVo goes back 25 years to executive roles at Gemstar-TV Guide and Rovi, becomes president-IP licensing. Armaly’s track record is “an important asset” for the company’s intellectual property business going forward “and ultimately upon its separation from the product business,” said Kirchner Monday. Murali Dharan was named chief operating officer of Xperi’s majority-owned machine learning platform startup, Perceive, which exited stealth mode in March. Other executive posts are Robert Andersen, chief financial officer; Petronel Bigioi, chief technology officer; Paul Davis, chief legal officer; Michael Hawkey, general manager-TiVo; Matt Milne, chief revenue officer; John Pernin, chief strategy and corporate development officer; and Geir Skaaden, chief products and services officer. The companies agreed in December to combine in an all-stock transaction with a combined enterprise value of $3 billion.

The FCC approved updated sensor deployment and coverage plans by two environmental sensing capability providers in the 3.5 GHz band -- CommScope and Google. The Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology approved the updated registrations working with NTIA and DOD, said a Wednesday notice in docket 15-319.

Mastercard debit cards are being used by Samsung Money by SoFi, said the financial services company Wednesday, calling it a “new mobile-first money management experience.” Samsung Money by SoFi combines a cash management account with a Mastercard debit card and offers exclusive benefits to Samsung Pay, in partnership with fintech company SoFi. The account is secure, with no account fees, and it rewards users for saving with higher interest relative to the national average of transactional accounts, Mastercard said. It's due to launch this summer.

Amazon announced five renewable energy projects in China, Australia and the U.S. as part of a goal to reach 80% renewable energy by 2024, 100% by 2030, it said Thursday. The 100% target could be reached as early as 2025, said the company; its net zero carbon target date is 2040. Amazon's first renewable energy project in China is a 100 megawatt (MW) solar project in Shandong that’s expected to generate 128,000 MW hours (MWh) of clean energy annually. The second Australian solar project, 105 MW in South Wales, has 250,000 MWh capacity, enough to power 40,000 Australian homes, Amazon said. The latest renewable energy projects in the U.S. include two new solar projects in Ohio at 200 MW and 80 MW. A 130 MW solar project is planned for Virginia, the 12th there. The five new renewable energy projects will supply about 615 MW of additional renewable capacity, and an expected 1.2 million MWh of energy annually, to Amazon’s fulfillment network and Amazon Web Services data centers, it said.