BSA|The Software Alliance filed a brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit supporting Microsoft’s appeal of a nondisclosure order from the Eastern District of New York barring it from notifying anyone that it received a warrant for a business customer’s data. “Industry depends on the trust that customers place in cloud service providers to protect their data,” BSA said (in Pacer) in the brief, posted Tuesday in docket 20-3945. “To maintain that trust, when the Government demands a customer’s data, a cloud service provider must be allowed to notify the customer in all but the most unusual circumstances,’ BSA said. “Upholding nondisclosure orders that fail to meet First Amendment requirements, like the one at issue here, threatens to undermine the customer trust that is essential to the cloud services industry.” A group of former prosecutors from New York also supported (in Pacer) Microsoft. “New technologies should not be exempt from traditional constitutional safeguards,” they said: “The issuance of a § 2705(b) secrecy order must be justified by a specific and meaningful showing and must be narrowly tailored to promote a compelling government interest and be the least restrictive means of achieving that interest.”

Under BlackBerry’s agreement with Amazon Web Services to develop and market BlackBerry’s cloud-based intelligent vehicle data system, code-named Ivy, to automotive OEMs, BlackBerry “will own all the commercial relationships with customers” and will share revenue with AWS, said BlackBerry CEO John Chen on a fiscal Q3 investor call Thursday. AWS and BlackBerry announced the agreement Dec. 1. Modern vehicles generate huge amounts of data, but the auto industry “is not prepared to capture and create value from the analytics” because the data are difficult to collect and monetize “without very costly integrations,” said Chen. Ivy’s task “is to make it easy to gather, securely transport and analyze these data in a standard and a cost-efficient way across multiple brands and models on a common platform,” he said. The multiyear pact with AWS is an “exclusive co-development and co-marketing agreement,” he said. “This type of agreement is rare. BlackBerry and AWS engineers have been working very closely to jointly build the platform.” The effort will yield “an ecosystem of apps and services developed on the BlackBerry Ivy platform over time,” he said. The platform’s “recurring revenue model” will monetize data analytics apps and services on per-use and subscription bases, he said. “An important difference between BlackBerry Ivy and competitors in this space is that we allow the OEM to own the data and with that the relationship with their customers. We’re already in discussion with some automakers who were granted early access and we have received positive initial feedback.” The target is to commercialize the first Ivy apps and services in time for automakers’ 2023 model year, he said. “While it is too early for us to provide a revenue outlook, we are confident that BlackBerry Ivy addresses a very large market opportunity.”

The Department of Transportation has identified most of the oversight skills the agency’s workforce needs to regulate self-driving cars and other automated technologies, but hasn’t “fully assessed whether its workforce has these skills,” reported GAO Friday. “DOT did not survey staff or assess skill gaps in data analysis or cybersecurity positions important to automated technology oversight.” The agency therefore lacks “critical information needed to identify skill gaps and ensure key relevant staff are equipped to oversee the safety of these technologies now and in the future,” said the auditor. DOT agrees with GAO recommendations that it should “regularly measure progress toward closing skill gaps,” but thinks its current program of doing skills assessments every three years is “sufficient,” said the agency. GAO recommended annual assessments. DOT promised a “detailed response” to GAO's recommendations within 180 days.

U.S. e-commerce sales rose 33% year over year in the first nine months of 2020, while traditional retail sales grew 1%, said Brie Carere, FedEx chief marketing and communications officer. E-commerce package shipping volume is expected to more than triple to 111 million packages daily by 2026 from 2019, she told a quarterly call Thursday.

Total online consumer spending topped $22 billion over the big three holiday season shopping days, reported Comscore Friday. Cyber Monday sales rose 24% to $9.81 billion, vs. a 31% increase from 2018 to 2019. Black Friday online sales grew 26% to $7.34 billion, and Thanksgiving sales jumped 26% to $4.94 billion. Mobile’s share of digital spending on Thanksgiving reached 45%, from 40% a year ago; mobile spending on Black Friday was 42% vs. 37%.

Forty-two percent of the 150 million U.S. consumers who plan to shop for the holidays on Super Saturday, the last Saturday before Christmas, plan to do so exclusively online, said the National Retail Federation Thursday. Twenty-one percent of holiday shoppers this year plan to give an “experience” gift, down from 25% last year and the lowest since NRF first asked five years ago. “The pandemic has impacted ‘gifts of experience’ this year,” said Executive Vice President-Strategy Phil Rist of Prosper Insights. The firm surveyed 8,092 consumers Nov. 25-Dec. 4.

Next year will likely bring more North American "power users" of broadband who consume 1 TB or more of data per month, with the group reaching 10%-11% of subscribers, a 14% increase over 2020, OpenVault CEO Mark Trudeau blogged Wednesday. He said such power users could become as high as 13%-14% while pandemic lockdowns remain: A conservative estimate of average monthly broadband use in North America in 2021 would be 430-445 GB per subscriber, a 10% increase, but monthly averages already are going past 480 GB and could hit 500 GB. The executive said those numbers likely will recede after pandemic conditions ease.

Google's proposed acquisition of Fitbit can proceed, with conditions, the European Commission said. There was an investigation of the transaction and the companies' complementary activities, it said Thursday. Fitbit has limited market share in the smartwatch segment in Europe, where there are many larger rivals, such as Apple, Garmin and Samsung, so the acquisition will lead to "very limited horizontal overlaps," the EC said. The probe focused on data collected by Fitbit wearable devices and the interoperability of those devices with Google's Android operating system for smartphones. The EC was concerned Google would acquire Fitbit's database on users' health and fitness, plus the technology to develop a similar database, making it hard for rivals to match Google's services in online search advertising. Other worries were that Google might restrict competitors' access to Fitbit's web application programming interface, to the detriment of European startups in the emerging digital healthcare space, and that Google could put competing makers of wearable wrist devices at a disadvantage by degrading their operability with Android smartphones. Google has offered commitments on advertising, web API access and Android APIs to run for 10 years and be monitored by a trustee to be appointed before the transaction closes, the EC said. "This deal will spur innovation in wearable devices and enable us to build products that help people lead healthier lives," emailed a Google spokesperson. "We understand that regulators wanted to look closely at this transaction, and we have worked constructively with them to resolve their concerns, including the set of legally binding commitments the" EC accepted. The spokesperson cited his company's past "assurances" about the takeover and privacy and working with other stakeholders.

Qualcomm and Google extended Project Treble to enable more Snapdragon-based platforms to run the latest Android operating system with fewer resources and a “predictable software lifecycle,” said the companies Wednesday. OEMs can upgrade mobile devices without modifying Qualcomm software, and use a common Android software branch to upgrade Snapdragon-based devices, they said. Android users “will have the latest OS upgrades and greater security on their devices,” said David Burke, Google vice president-Android engineering.

Qualcomm’s 678 mobile entertainment platform, which follows the 675, offers a 460 CPU core clock speed up to 2.2 GHz, improved graphics processor performance and support for triple camera photos with up to 48 megapixels and zero shutter lag, said the company Tuesday. Its artificial intelligence engine features bokeh, low-light capture and laser autofocus, allowing users to enhance photos, it said. It enables 4K video capture, slow motion, 5x optical zoom and dual-camera support up to 16 megapixels. The platform supports advanced carrier aggregation with downloads up to 600 Mbps and uploads up to 150 Mbps.