Baidu’s $3.6 billion all-cash buy of YY Live, the Chinese video streaming service, will render ad-free content a more “meaningful piece” of Baidu’s core business, said Chief Financial Officer Herman Yu on a Q3 investor call Monday. Once Baidu closes the transaction in 2021's first half, its ad-supported “legacy business, which has been dragging our mobile ecosystem growth, will become an even smaller piece” of the company’s portfolio, he said. Baidu has “substantial upside from growing nonadvertising revenue,” said CEO Robin Li. Ad-free revenue, as a share of Baidu’s “consumer-facing business,” is much lower than that of its “peers,” he said. “Adding YY Live to our portfolio will allow Baidu to gain immediate operational experience and know-how on building a large live video community,” plus speed its migration to ad-free revenue, he said. Li rationalized the deal amid growing saturation in streaming services, saying “it's only natural for us to integrate with a live streaming business such as YY and further monetize our existing user base and traffic” of 300 million daily active users.

Nearly 70% of U.S. small-to-medium businesses are concerned about cybersecurity vulnerabilities at their locations, blogged Parks Associates Monday. Thirty-seven percent are likely to buy data security services in the next six months. The connected device landscape for SMBs has been steadily growing and “becoming more complicated,” said analyst Jennifer Kent, noting the increased device load on networks from access control devices, cameras, thermostats, lighting and signage. Having employees working at home during the pandemic is “opening new vulnerabilities to a company’s network,” she said.

President-elect Joe Biden cited universal broadband access during a Monday speech as one of his priorities for reviving the U.S. economy. The issue came up in a meeting he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris had with business and labor leaders, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Biden said. Broadband is “more important than ever for remote learning,” telework and telemedicine amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the politician said: The U.S. needs to build its “digital infrastructure to help businesses, healthcare workers, first responders and students.” Biden previously cited the issue when he accepted the Democratic Party nomination in August (see 2008210001).

AudioEye ended Q3 with about 22,000 customers, a 500% increase from a year earlier and more than triple its customer accounts since Dec. 31, said Executive Chairman Carr Bettis on a Thursday investor call. The company markets online accessibility tools for the visually impaired and certifies websites for American With Disabilities Act compliance. Though demand for digital accessibility is strong, AudioEye has had new customer deals delayed because of COVID-19, said Bettis. “We've also continued to extend some more flexible pricing and other options to our customers on a case-by-case basis, to help them manage through the impact on their own businesses from the pandemic.” Customer renewals are down “substantially due to events that are out of our control, such as bankruptcy proceedings or outright business closures,” he said.

Remote working drove “significant increased usage” of Webex in fiscal Q1 ended Oct. 24, plus “solid adoption as customers look to us for a flexible work solution that also enables privacy and security,” said Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins on a Thursday investor call. Webex had nearly 600 million participants in October alone, “almost double the number we had in March,” he said. “We are reimagining every aspect of the collaboration experience” with built-in artificial intelligence technology, security and integrated workflow applications to “create a more intelligent work environment and to improve productivity,” he said. The stock closed 7.1% higher Friday at $41.40.

OLED microdisplay supplier eMagin had an 8% Q3 revenue decline, partly due to completing a project under a contract with a tier 1 consumer tech company that will become active again in Q4, said CEO Andrew Sculley on a Thursday investor call. “We completed the wafer design for this company and it is now being fabricated at a foundry,” he said. “We anticipate receiving these newly designed wafers in early Q2 and then we'll begin to directly pattern the OLED." The customer’s goal is to commercialize an augmented- or virtual-reality headset for the consumer electronics business, he said. He thinks "this market will take off is because we talked to the companies themselves who are interested.” Companies are shopping eMagin because they “want the next generation to be a display that has no screen door effect,” he said. That’s a mesh-like appearance when gaps between pixels can be seen on-screen. “The companies that we're dealing with certainly are pushing us very hard to get these things done quickly,” he said. "There's great belief in consumer electronics companies that this is a path forward.” The stock closed 15.7% lower Thursday at $1.13.

Ninety-seven percent of U.S. adults buying tech during Black Friday Week plan to shop in actual stores, said CTA Thursday. More consumers plan to use their mobile devices (86%) and voice-activated digital assistants (51%) to shop than last year. Some 86% plan to buy tech devices, accessories and/or streaming services during the five-day period. The group projects overall holiday spending at $135 billion. The online survey of 2,006 U.S. adults was done Oct. 30-Nov. 1.

Antitrust authorities cleared the way for Uber to buy Postmates. An FTC early termination notice dated Monday and released Tuesday ended the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period.

Cloud service providers need to better coax creators to move their content production to the cloud, Microsoft Azure Media and Entertainment Chief Technology Officer Hanno Basse told a SMPTE 2020 virtual conference keynote Tuesday. Azure embarked on a “customer listening tour” with “well-prepared survey questions,” canvassing nearly four dozen “top creators” in the film and TV industry, said Basse, CTO at 20th Century Fox Film before its sale to Disney and ex-founding president of the UHD Alliance. He joined Microsoft in April. The survey's goal was to give Azure a “good, wholesome picture” about the creative industry’s cloud “expectations,” using that feedback to better “inform” its product development process, he said. Azure heard from creators that cloud vendors “need to do a better job of actually raising awareness as to what cloud production actually means and the benefits that it brings,” said Basse. An important part of that is “total cost of ownership,” he said. Creators told Azure “security and access control” are fundamentally important cloud requirements, he said. It heard from “people in the trenches” that there’s a constant “tug of war” between personnel on the set and studio heads about “what they want to make available to the studio executives,” he said. “Not every day is perfect on set, so there needs to be a way of not exposing everything that goes on there.”

Some 35% of U.S. broadband households report a data security problem in the past year, including malware/spyware infection, loss of privacy and data/identity theft, said Parks Associates. “More activities and use cases are going across more devices, and that increases exposure to risk,” said President Elizabeth Parks. Four in five are concerned about security and privacy issues at home, led by identity theft.