Oppo joined the Alliance for Open Media at the promoter level and will work with other members to advance technologies in content creation and provision, video compression, and media delivery and consumption, AOMedia said Thursday. The company will help shape open and interoperable media streaming standards that power web-based video, AOMedia said.

Consumer demand for chips and faster mobile communications won't ebb soon, said executives at a major manufacturer of consumer electronics for other companies. "Things will be back to more normal conditions” in January-March 2022, said Jabil CEO Mark Mondello of semiconductor supply-demand balance. “We think this thing will start to show levels of relief” in fiscal Q1, ending late November, “and for sure as we get into calendar '22,” he said. Demand for semiconductors “has never been higher, with the accelerated convergence of technologies and the associated data generation and storage needs,” Chief Financial Officer Mike Dastoor told a call Tuesday for fiscal Q2, ended Feb. 28. “Nearly every part of the economy runs on silicon.” Jabil is seeing what “finally looks to be reasonable plans in terms of the 5G wireless rollout,” said Mondello. “That’s here to stay, not a number of months, but a number of years,” he said. “That’s going to have all kinds of tangents tied to it as well, once the 5G rollout gets underway, in terms of derivatives to other parts of our business.” The technology is speeding the “secular expansion of cloud adoption and infrastructure growth,” he said.

Organizations prefer buying from tech firms that “are transparent and proactive” in helping them manage cybersecurity risk, a survey found. Intel hired Ponemon Institute to canvass nearly 1,900 individuals in the U.S., U.K., Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa who are involved in overseeing their organizations’ IT infrastructure security. About three-quarters said it’s highly important that their technology provider offer “hardware-assisted capabilities to mitigate software exploits.” A similar proportion said their organizations are more likely to buy technologies and services from providers that proactively fight security vulnerabilities. Forty-eight percent said their tech providers don’t do this.

Samsung agreed to license Nokia’s video standards patents, said Nokia Thursday. Samsung will make royalty payments to Nokia, but the terms of the agreement are confidential. Nokia didn’t say which video standards are involved, but it’s on record as asserting ownership of H.264 standard-essential patents on HD video (see 2007180001).

The “supply-side push” of 5G devices will help propel global smartphone shipments to 13.9% year-over-year growth in Q1 and 5.5% for 2021, reported IDC Wednesday, forecasting a 3.6% compound annual growth rate for smartphones through 2025. IDC expects 5G-enabled handsets to be more than 40% of volume in 2021, and 69% share in 2025. “Strong performance" in Q4 "led to a huge push from all OEMs to increase production,” said IDC Senior Analyst Sangeetika Srivastava. “Although this may create some temporary challenges in production, we do not foresee any significant gap as the manufacturers successfully cope.”

Samsung’s delay in launching its 2021 foldable smartphones until Q3 will spark an unexpectedly “significant surge” in such shipments August through December, blogged Display Supply Chain Consultants CEO Ross Young Monday. At least three models are expected from Samsung, including “a more aggressively priced version” of its clamshell foldable, he said. “Samsung should drive a lot of volume.” Q4 2020 foldable shipments were up 54% from Q3 and 242% from the 2019 quarter. A 40% year-on-year decline is expected in Q2 2021, but shipments in Q3 and Q4 “should each be up well over 100%,” he said.

Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Sound for smartphones, wireless earbuds and headsets. It combines technologies from the chipmaker’s mobile and audio platforms, delivering “high-resolution, wired quality audio, wirelessly,” it said Thursday. It's for streaming music, communications and wireless gaming. Also Thursday, Amazon Music and Qualcomm announced a curated Snapdragon Sound playlist on Amazon’s premium HD Music service.

Marvell Technology CEO Matt Murphy is optimistic on 5G even as his company is working to avert the worst effects of chip shortages. The global semiconductor supply chain clearly “was not completely prepared for the surge” in COVID-19-induced demand across most “end markets,” he said on a fiscal Q4 call Wednesday. The supply chain “needs time to increase capacity,” and the “supply gap” seems likely to persist “at least” through Marvell’s fiscal year ending January 2022, he said. The chipmaker downplayed its revenue growth outlook for fiscal Q1 ending late April. It's forecasting $800 million, plus or minus 5%, which would mean flat sequential growth at the midrange. The stock closed 12% lower Thursday at $40.10. Marvell’s “growth initiatives” in 5G and cloud helped drive a 24% revenue increase in its networking business for Q4 ended Jan. 30, said Murphy. “We delivered our sixth straight quarter of sequential revenue growth” in 5G, “driven by standard and semi-custom product shipments to Samsung and Nokia,” partially offset by a decline in application-specific 5G ICs “as deployments in China take a pause,” he said. Factoring out the “typical lumpy nature of individual regional rollouts,” said Murphy, 5G infrastructure deployments “are expected to continue to strengthen worldwide.” That the recently concluded first phase of the FCC C-band spectrum auction was the “highest grossing” in the U.S. was “a clear indicator of the potential revenue opportunities carriers expect from 5G technology,” he said. “Other regions around the world are also opening up spectrum for 5G services.” Marvell’s open radio access networks platform, launched in December, has Facebook and Fujitsu as customers, he said.

Global smart speaker unit shipments reached a record 150 million in 2020, largely on new models from Apple, Amazon, Google, Alibaba and Baidu for the holidays, said Strategy Analytics Wednesday. Component shortages hurt the category in Q4, and stock supplies will remain tight through early 2021, said analyst David Watkins.

January semiconductor sales increased 13.2% globally from a year earlier to $40 billion, and were up 1% sequentially from December, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association Monday. “Global semiconductor production is on the rise to meet increasing demand and ease the ongoing chip shortage affecting the auto sector and others, and annual sales are projected to increase in 2021,” said SIA CEO John Neuffer. Year-on-year sales in the Americas were up 15.4% in January, second only to Asia Pacific (up 16%), said SIA. Month-on-month sales were down 3% in the Americas and 1% in Japan but up by single digits in all other regions, it said.