Q4 smart speaker shipments fell 64.7% in the U.S. across all three voice platforms in a market “correction,” reported Omdia Wednesday. Amazon Alexa speaker shipments plunged 79% year on year, Google Assistant speakers were off 39.4%, and Apple HomePod mini shipments fell 34.6%, it said.

Some 42 markets have access to ATSC 3.0 broadcasts, under 10% of the viewing public in the U.S., and just 3 million 3.0-capable TVs were shipped in the U.S. last year, said Digital Tech Consulting President Myra Moore, moderator on a Streaming Media Connect panel last week.

U.S. importers made smartphone shipments to the U.S. a nearly $60 billion business in 2021, with the highest yearly dollar volume since 2007 when customs authorities began tracking handsets in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule’s 8517.12.00 subheading, according to Census data accessed Monday through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb portal. Inflationary trends from supply chain woes and semiconductor shortages, plus a higher mix of 5G-enabled handsets with higher average value, likely fueled the record-high dollar volume.

A federal judge mulled Thursday whether Maryland’s digital ad tax is in fact a penalty on big tech. At virtual oral argument, U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby in Baltimore weighed jurisdictional issues on the challenge by U.S. Chamber of Commerce, NetChoice Internet Association and Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) (case 21-cv-00410).

Global supply chain issues and materials shortages continue to have a “direct and indirect impact” on shipments, said Universal Electronics Inc. CEO Paul Arling on a Q4 earnings call Thursday. Q4 sales dropped 7% year on year to $144.9 million, said the company. It swung to a $6.3 million net loss from a $12.2 million year-earlier profit.

U.S. TV sales will remain “below pre-COVID levels” short term, said Roku Chief Financial Office Steve Louden on a Q4 earnings call Thursday. Supply-chain disruptions “will continue to negatively affect the size of the TV market and our player margins,” Louden said. Roku's stock plunged to a 52-week low Friday before closing the day 22.3% lower at $112.46.

Consumer demand was strong, and Walmart’s team overcame COVID-19 and supply chain challenges in Q4 FY 2022 to post 7.6% sales growth to $152.9 billion, excluding divestures of the Japan and U.K. businesses, said CEO Doug McMillon on the company’s Thursday earnings call.

The semiconductor industry “clearly has a long way to go before supply catches up with demand,” said Applied Materials CEO Gary Dickerson on an earnings call Wednesday for fiscal Q1 ended Jan. 30. The company supplies semiconductor production equipment to chipmakers and is a good bellwether of semiconductor industry health.

The U.S. Court of International Trade should deny DOJ’s motion to add a November 2018 investigatory “update” report from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to the administrative record in the Section 301 litigation (see 2202160028) because the government failed to show USTR “actually relied on or considered” the report when it was deciding to impose either the Lists 3 or 4A tariffs on Chinese imports, said Akin Gump lawyers for sample-case plaintiffs HMTX Industries and Jasco Products in a partial opposition Wednesday in docket 1:21-cv-52.

The concept of the Matter protocol was hatched in 2019 to address “what comes next” in the IoT to overcome barriers to adoption, growth and use, particularly in the smart home, said Michelle Mindala-Freeman, head-marketing and member services, Connectivity Standards Alliance, on a Parks Associates webinar Wednesday. Release 1.0 of Matter is due midyear.