Rebecca Day

The COVID-19 pandemic turned the TV world on its ear in a short time, and the industry is grappling to learn which trends will stick and how to address the many challenges, said panelists on Digital Media Wire’s virtual Future of Television conference Monday.

Apple is “very, very focused" on discussing the privacy and security elements of the App Store with regulators and legislators, said CEO Tim Cook, responding to a question Thursday from Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty on how Apple will balance consumer preference for App Store transactions with legislators’ push for more choice. The analyst cited a Morgan Stanley survey of 4,000 consumers showing most customers don’t want to pay for apps directly to developers because they value the security and privacy of transactions within the App Store. Apple is working “to explain the decisions that we've made that are key to keeping the privacy and security there, which is to not have sideloading" or to open the iPhone to unreviewed apps, which would sidestep privacy restrictions Apple put on the App Store, Cook said. Morgan Stanley didn't provide a copy of its survey Friday. Meanwhile, for the holiday season, Apple faces chip shortages and high demand across product lines, Cook told a quarterly call for the three months ended Sept. 25. See Q4 materials here.

The movie business passed “an enormous stress test,” said Imax CEO Rich Gelfond on a Thursday call, saying “the movies are back” as studios recommitted to theatrical releases after cinema closures. The blockbuster-titles slate is “kicking into high gear,” said Gelfond, referencing an “unprecedented pipeline of marquee tentpole” titles to close out 2021 and through 2022. Despite “massive disruption” of theater shutdowns and availability of releases via streaming, “consumer demand for moviegoing remains strong,” said Gelfond. “One hundred years of human behavior doesn’t change that easily.” Q3 revenue at Imax was $56.6 million vs. $37.3 million in the COVID-19 pandemic-colored 2020 quarter. Net loss narrowed to $8.4 million from $47.2 million. Imax surpassed its record for the best October at the global box office (see 2110250048), on track to exceed $115 million, among the top 10 months in its history, the executive said.

After COVID-19 “choppiness” in the first half, Spotify grew monthly active users by 19% year on year to 381 million in Q3, said CEO Daniel Ek on a Wednesday quarterly call. Revenue grew 27% to $2.9 billion, led by premium subscriber revenue, said a shareholder letter. Ek said linear radio has 46% share of U.S. audio listening, “despite consumption shifting steadily away from it.” Shares closed 8.3% higher at $273.13.

Energous got an FCC Part 15 grant of equipment authorization for a wireless power transmitter at any distance, an “inflection point” for wireless charging, acting CEO Cesar Johnston told us Tuesday. “You’re seeing the transition of the increase of power and the increase of distance, which effectively opens up now a potential market that did not exist before.” Energous' 1-watt Active Energy Harvesting transmitter can charge multiple devices at once, enabling over-the-air charging at any distance for IoT devices such as retail sensors, electronic shelf labels and industrial devices, said the company. It received similar approval from European regulators in May (see 2105110013).

The M1 family of chips was among highlights at Apple's Monday product launch event. And later this year, Siri is expanding support for multi-user voice recognition so “everyone in the home can set music according to their preferences," Apple said. The company bowed a premium plan for Apple Music that gives subscribers voice access to the service’s full catalog for an additional $4.99 monthly. Users can request music be played across Siri-enabled devices, including CarPlay, the company said. The company increased the power in its Mac chips, with the M1 Pro and M1 Max introducing a SoC architecture to pro systems for the first time.

A battle about data sharing is brewing between content owners and distributors and platforms they’re on, said Nick Cicero, Conviva vice president-strategy, on a Parks Associates webinar last week. Cicero noted an uptick in media companies building their own devices, citing Comcast’s Sky Glass TVs unveiled this month by its Sky Group division in London, plus Amazon’s Fire TV and Roku TV platforms. “You have this battle between the TV platform, the device manufacturer and then the application layer on top of it,” Cicero said, “and figuring out what slices are going to own a bunch of the stack.” He contrasted Disney, which owns a large body of content with set makers LG and Vizio that own the operating system and device layers. Parks analyst Paul Erickson said: “If you own the metal, you can control everything upwards from there.” Consumers would prefer data access to be equal across services and devices so they can have the most personalized experience possible, he said.

Global smartphone shipments dropped 6% in Q3 as vendors struggled to meet demand amid a “chipset famine,” Canalys reported Friday. The smartphone industry is straining to maximize device production, while chipmakers bump prices to “disincentivize over-ordering," in an attempt to close the gap between demand and supply, said analyst Ben Stanton, saying shortages won’t ease until “well into 2022.” High global freight costs hiked device pricing at retail, Stanton said. Verizon dropped its $1,000 iPhone offer Thursday, scaling it back to a maximum $500 off, and AT&T’s website Friday showed the $1,000 deal expiring Oct. 14. New Street Research's Jonathan Chaplin wrote that the end of the $1,000 offers put the brakes on a “wireless industry selloff” around subsidies offered with the iPhone 13 launch. The moves may improve T-Mobile’s ability to take share in Q4, said the analyst: The carrier was offering up to $1,000 “on us” Friday via 30 monthly bill credits for customers choosing the Magenta Max plan and trading in an eligible device.

As more devices and smart home functionality depend on Wi-Fi, opportunities are rising for ISPs to oversee home networks, a Parks Associates virtual conference was told last week. The average U.S. broadband home has 14 connected devices, Parks says. “It’s about having the right systems, the right spectrum and marrying that with managed Wi-Fi networks,” said Shane Eleniak, Calix Edge Products senior vice president-revenue. “The home has become as complex as traditionally what we viewed as enterprise complexity.” With Wi-Fi 6 and 6e, there’s increasing concern over consumer confusion and protocol fatigue, said conference speakers. Linksys is tackling both by focusing on customer solutions rather than terms, to “take pressure off the consumer to be the expert,” said Aly Reyes, director-regional product management. Nokia Wi-Fi head Justin Doucette said the change to Wi-Fi 6 is a big improvement over 802.11 standards. “Most consumers really don’t care” about the specification, he said. “They just want it to work.”

Dialog terminated a strategic alliance agreement with Energous, the RF wireless power company said Thursday. Dialog invested $10 million in November 2016 and another $15 million in June 2017 (see 1706290019) and was the exclusive component supplier of Energous’ WattUp technology. Energous had agreed to use Dialog as the exclusive supplier of its wire-free charging technology for specified fields of use, subject to certain exceptions, it said. Both agreed on revenue sharing and to collaborate on commercialization of licensed products with each retaining its intellectual property. Terms of the seven-year agreement will continue through a wind-down ending in September 2024, and exclusivity ended, it said. Renesas acquired Dialog last month for about $5.6 billion. They didn't comment Friday.