Paul Gluckman

Huawei “has been facing a lot of challenges the past few years,” including a 29% revenue decline in 2021 amid U.S. export sanctions and weakening smartphone demand, William Tian, Huawei Consumer Business Group president-West European region, said in an IFA 2022 keynote interview Saturday. “The past few years have been incredibly hard for everyone,” he said. “But we are still going. We are still innovating.” Said Tian: “We have not given up.”

The competitive environment in cybersecurity “remains favorable” to CrowdStrike, and “we continue to see strong demand even as organizations respond to macroeconomic conditions,” said CEO George Kurtz on an earnings call Tuesday for fiscal Q2 ended July 31. For CrowdStrike, “this primarily manifested in the form of increased levels of required approvals on some deals as companies evaluated investment priorities, which can extend the time it takes to close deals,” said Kurtz. “However, cybersecurity is not a discretionary line item.” CrowdStrike’s quarterly revenue exceeded $500 million for the first time, he said.

Netflix is seeking an order declaring it doesn’t infringe “any valid claim” of Broadcom patents essential to the H.264 and H.265 video codec standards, said the streaming company’s counterclaim Monday in docket 3:20-cv-04677 at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The case turned 2 years old July 14 on allegations that Netflix infringed a dozen Broadcom patents. Netflix also said it countersued to enforce Broadcom’s “contractual commitments” to license its standard-essential patents (SEPs) for H.264 and H.265 on reasonable and nondiscriminatory (RAND) terms. Broadcom was obligated under the ITU’s “common patent policy” to publicly declare it would license the SEPs on RAND terms, said Netflix. Broadcom “broke those promises” when it failed to identify its SEPs to Netflix and failed to offer Netflix the required RAND licenses, it said. Broadcom instead demanded that Netflix license, on “unreasonable and exorbitant terms,” Broadcom’s entire U.S. patent portfolio, “most or all of which, is irrelevant and therefore worthless to Netflix,” it said. Broadcom didn’t comment Tuesday.

Netflix executives and board members made “materially false” and misleading statements about the health of the company’s “business, operations, and prospects” until mid-April, influencing its plunging stock price, alleged a shareholder derivative complaint Aug. 16 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Unlike the two direct class-action lawsuits filed this spring in which shareholders alleged they suffered financial harm when top Netflix executives breached their fiduciary duties by failing to disclose to investors that account sharing and increased competition from other streaming services were creating significant challenges (see 2206020049), a shareholder derivative complaint seeks to protect a company’s financial well-being and reputation from the improper actions of its officers and board members. Plaintiff Judith Ormerod, a Pennsylvania resident, owns Netflix shares and will continue to hold them “throughout the pendency of this action,” said her complaint. Ormerod will “fairly and adequately represent the interests of the shareholders in enforcing the rights of the corporation,” it said. Netflix didn’t comment Monday.

Bill.com estimates 400,000 businesses, many of them single-proprietor enterprises, used its electronic payment services in fiscal 2022 ended June 30, a threefold increase year over year, said CEO Rene Lacerte on a fiscal Q4 earnings call Thursday. But toward the end of the fourth quarter, “we started to see signals of the macro environment impacting spend patterns, especially in discretionary categories like advertising,” he said. Bill.com began in June to see its total payment volume growth rates “moderate,” said Chief Financial Officer John Rettig. “This trend continued into July and early August,” he said. “While it appears that the macro environment is influencing business spend, we continue to see very strong customer acquisition, engagement and retention.” The current macro environment “presents numerous near-term uncertainties,” said Rettig. “Our fiscal 2023 outlook anticipates customers will continue to react to the external factors and temper spend throughout the year, similar to the trends we saw emerging in late Q4 and early this quarter.” Bill.com believes “there is a significant greenfield opportunity ahead of us to help millions of businesses manage their cash flows, and transform their financial operations,” said Rettig. Its total addressable market (TAM) includes more than 30 million small businesses in the U.S. and 70 million globally, the majority of which “still use manual paper-based processes,” said CEO Lacerte. “Our TAM is significant.”

Despite ongoing global economic challenges and slower internet traffic growth, Akamai finished Q2 with revenue of $903 million, up 6% year over year and 9% higher in “constant currency,” said CEO Tom Leighton on a Tuesday earnings call. Q2 revenue in Akamai’s content delivery business declined 11% year over year to $417 million in results that were “clearly impacted by a continued deceleration in traffic growth among our largest media customers,” he said. “Like many companies, we're managing through a time of substantial economic headwinds and uncertainty with escalating inflation, the strengthening U.S. dollar, growing concerns about a global recession, escalating geopolitical tensions and conflicts and a slowing of internet traffic growth as the world tries to return to normal in the midst of a pandemic,” said Leighton.

Opinions varied among the comments received in the FCC’s June 22 NPRM on ATSC 3.0, five years into its voluntary deployment (see 2207060019), about whether the technology scored a hit with consumers. There appeared to be consensus in the comments posted Tuesday in docket 16-142 about keeping in place for now the requirement that TV broadcasters transmit their primary 3.0 video streams in compliance with ATSC's A/322 physical layer protocol standard. The A/322 requirement is due to expire March 6 unless the FCC reinstates it.

Qualcomm wants the FCC to “introduce the option” for broadcasters to use “5G Broadcast,” as an "alternative broadcast transmission standard” to ATSC 3.0 to beam over-the-air TV content to smartphones, because five years into 3.0's voluntary use, “broadcasters still lack the capability to reach on-the-go viewers via their mobile devices,” said the Snapdragon supplier in comments posted in docket 16-142. Comments were due Monday in the FCC’s NPRM on ATSC 3.0 deployment, including progress in broadcast and consumer adoption of the technology (see 2208090040). The agency’s June 22 rulemaking notice didn’t ask for public input on the progress to deploy 3.0 transmissions to mobile devices (see 2207060019), which Qualcomm correctly asserted don't exist. Qualcomm recommends the FCC “seek comment on implementation of the 5G Broadcast standard in this proceeding,” it said. “If allowed, this standard would provide mobile viewers with immersive broadcast content and critical public safety messages on their mobile devices when conventional broadcast alerting systems or cellular infrastructure are unavailable during a power outage,” it said. 5G Broadcast "would not replace ATSC 3.0 for fixed reception of television broadcast signals as the former technology targets mobility use case scenarios," said Qualcomm. 5G Broadcast "would complement the ATSC 3.0 services broadcasters are offering, reaching viewers wherever they are, including when they are out and about," it said. ATSC 3.0 “is not supported in mobile devices today” because a 3.0 modem “must be included in the mobile device along with additional hardware and software,” it said. 5G Broadcast, in contrast, “can be supported by mobile devices without any additional hardware,” it said. ATSC President Madeleine Noland said Tuesday she had no immediate comment "beyond that ATSC is reading through all of the submissions and may have an opinion to share after digesting what’s been written." Qualcomm was among several companies to oppose a commission mandate on 3.0 reception in smartphones in 2017, just before the FCC authorized 3.0's voluntary deployment for broadcasters; the commission never put such a mandate proposal on the table (see 1709200016). NPRM replies are due Sept. 6.

MPEG LA and InterDigital urged the FCC not to get involved in regulating patent licensing for ATSC 3.0 amid evidence that the free market was working well and showing no signs of license irregularities or abuses, in comments posted Monday in docket 16-142. The comments were due Monday in the FCC’s NPRM on all aspects of the ATSC 3.0 deployment, including whether 3.0-essential patents are being licensed on reasonable and nondiscriminatory (RAND) terms (see 2207060019).

There’s “much work to be done” in Warner Bros. Discovery’s plans to roll out HBO Max and Discovery+ as a “new combined offering under a single brand,” said Jean-Briac Perrette, president-CEO, global streaming and games, on a Q2 earnings call Thursday. “We are determined to get it right, which will take a bit of time,” he said. His team has developed a clear road map to migrate HBO Max and Discovery+ “onto one tech stack” that overcomes the “shortcomings” of both services, he said. HBO Max “has a competitive feature set, but has had performance and customer issues,” while Discovery+ “has best-in-class performance and consumer ratings, but more limited features,” he said. The combined service will launch in the U.S. next summer, and Latin America will follow later in 2023. European markets with HBO Max will launch in early 2024, with “key Asia Pacific territories” coming later in 2024, he said. “This idea of expensive films going direct to streaming, we cannot find an economic case for it,” said CEO David Zaslav on the decision to cancel this year’s HBO Max release of the $90 million feature film Batgirl. “We’ve been out in the town talking about our commitment to the theatrical exhibition and the theatrical window,” said Zaslav. “Our focus will be on theatrical, and when we bring the theatrical films to HBO Max, we find they have substantially more value.”