2. 2—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2010
kids ‘this is what I think you can see and this is what I think you should not see or play.’" But Yee conceded that
some of the justices, especially Antonin Scalia, indicated they thought the definition of a violent videogame that
would fall under the law was too vague. "I think that’s something we can ... improve upon," Yee said. "The vague-
ness issue was something" a few of the judges questioned, he said. But "there was a spirited discussion about the
whole issue of parents," and it sounded like, "at the very least what this court is willing to do is to provide us with a
pathway as to how we can in fact have a law that would limit the sale of these ultra-violet videogames to children
and withstand the test of a First Amendment challenge." It may be his bill or "another bill" created after the Su-
preme Court issues a decision that accomplishes the state’s goal, he said.
Morazzini said violent games fit within the exempted category of obscenity for minors, a category that the
Supreme Court first recognized in Ginsberg v. New York. The California law "differs from the New York law at
issue" in the earlier case "in only one respect," and that is that the earlier law "was concerned with minors’ access to
harmful sexual material outside the guidance of a parent." The "deviant level of violence" in certain games is "no
less harmful to the development of minors," he said.
But Scalia asked: "What’s a deviant violent videogame? As opposed to what? A normal violent video-
game?" Morazzini said deviant violence would be violence "departing from established norms." But Scalia asked,
"There are established norms of violence?" He said some Grimm fairy tales are quite violent. "Are you going to
ban them, too?" Scalia later said "every time there’s a new technology," one can claim that that violence is worse
than prior ones because it’s never been seen by kids before in that form. Scalia later wondered whether California
would also want to make it illegal for content to glorify drinking because that could harm minors. "What’s next
after violence? Drinking? Smoking? ... Are we to sit day by day to decide what else will be made an exception
from the First Amendment?" Justice Anthony Kennedy said there’s "been a societal consensus about sexual mate-
rial" for many years, but no such consensus exists for violent material.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked Morazzini if certain material is indeed dangerous to kids, why
would a law just stop with games? "What about films? What about comic books?" Justices Elena Kagan and
Sonia Sotomayor asked whether California officials would next want to make it illegal for other forms of me-
dia, including movies and rap music, to be rented or sold to minors if studies showed that they, too, were
harmful to kids. Sotomayor said one of the studies cited by California stated, "The effect of violence is the
same for a Bugs Bunny episode as it is for a violent video. So can the legislature now, because it has that
study, say we can outlaw Bugs Bunny?" But Morazzini said the state had no plan to bar such movies from
kids because "cartoons do not depart from the established norms to a level of violence to which children have
been historically exposed to." Morazzini stressed that the California law targeted only games because of the
"interactive nature" of the violence in them. The kids playing such games become "the aggressor," acting out
the violent acts depicted in them, he said.
Kagan also asked that Morazzini state "in plain English what morbid violence is," wondering if Mortal
Kombat games would fall in that category. Morazzini cited the law’s three-prong standard, saying a jury
would determine what game had morbid violence. But Scalia said he was "concerned about the producer of
the games who has to know what he has to do in order to comply with the law. ... A law that has criminal pen-
alties has to be clear. And how is the manufacturer to know whether a particular violent game is covered or
not? ... I really wouldn’t know what to do as a manufacturer" based on the law, he said. Morazzini seemed to
add another layer of confusion to the issue when he said that "some" M-rated games "would be covered" under
the law, "but not all."
Justice Samuel Alito raised an objection to the law bundling all minors together. "Isn’t the average person
likely to think that what’s appropriate for a 17-year-old may not be appropriate for a 10-year-old or an eight-year-
old?" Ginsburg then stressed that California "doesn’t make any distinctions between 17-year-olds and four-year-
olds." Morazzini said juries would be the ones to decide what the standard is for an "average minor." Scalia sar-
castically fired back, "An average minor is halfway between 0 and 18. Is that nine years old?"
3. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY—3
But Justice Stephen Breyer later asked game industry lawyer Paul Smith why it wasn’t "common sense to
say that if a parent wants his 13-year-old child to have a game where the child is going to sit there and imagine he is
a torturer and impose gratuitous, painful, excruciating torturing violence upon small children and women, and do
this for an hour or so, and there is no social or redeeming value, it’s not artistic, it’s not literary," then why can’t a
state have the right to tell that parent to "go buy it yourself?"
EMA President Bo Andersen thought the oral argument made by Smith "went very well," he told us. An-
dersen said he wasn’t concerned by the tough questions that some of the judges had for Smith. "That’s their job —
to dig to the depths on an issue like this," said Andersen. The comments they made don’t "necessarily reflect how
they think the case" should be decided, "so none of those extreme questions bothered me at all," he said.
ESA President Michael Gallagher also was upbeat about the argument, he told us. "I felt extraordinarily
proud of our industry today," he said. But Gallagher said, "It’s the Supreme Court, so you have to be concerned
about all of the comments" made by the justices, although "I absolutely believe that Paul" made the better case.
The court has "enormous latitude to fashion a result of their liking," and the ESA is "very respectful of that," he
said. But he said, "We believe that a clear majority of the justices understood the primary points that we made and
asked questions very consistent with those points. We’re very hopeful that in several months, we’re going to have
a strong result, a strong decision from the court that continues to protect parents and families, and the decisions that
they make" involving videogame content," he said.
Game companies "would be discouraged" to create any games that could possibly fall under the vague defi-
nition of violent games created by the law, Gallagher later said in a conference call with reporters. The law could
also impact other forms of media, not just games, he argued.
The court seemed to be against creating a new obscenity exception to the First Amendment, based on the
justices’ comments," Smith said in the conference call. Scalia seemed to be especially reluctant to take such a step,
Smith said. But Smith said it was "very difficult" to gauge how the court will rule. For one thing, he said, Alito
and Chief Justice John Roberts, in particular, raised the notion that the interactive nature of videogames presented a
"challenge" because that made it different than other forms of speech and other forms of media. Echoing Smith,
Ken Doroshow, ESA senior vice president and general counsel, said there was "no way to know how this is going
to come out." The only Supreme Court justice who asked no questions of the lawyers and made no comments was
Clarence Thomas, making it impossible to even guess what he thought about the issue.
About 40 pro-gamers rallied outside the Supreme Court building Tuesday. Among them was Usiel Phoe-
nix, a 17-year-old board member of the National Youth Rights Association who said she doesn’t even play video-
games. There was "a larger issue at stake" than just videogames, she said, calling the California law another gov-
ernment attempt to take away the rights of young people. She compared it to the efforts made against older forms
of media and even pinball in the 1970s. "This is not a matter of protecting small children," she said. "No toddler is
going to accidentally make his way to a videogame store with $50 in his pocket and ask to purchase the latest
Halo." The law will "only affect those minors with the maturity and independence to make their way to a video-
game store and purchase the game of their choice," she said. "The underlying philosophy of this law is that there is
something inherent" to people under 18 "that causes them to sustain severe psychological damage from playing
videogames, and this is an assumption that the science simply does not support," she said. "If I cold vote I would
vote against these people who would stray so far from the founding principles of our nation and" create "needless
censorship," she said.
Gamers Greg Collier, dressed as Mario from Nintendo’s games, and Lisa McKee of Delaware each said
they came out to support the game industry because the California law was an attack on gamers’ rights.
McKee called gaming a "career choice" for her, saying she was majoring in computer science at Delaware
State University. — Jeff Berman
4. 4—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2010
'Looks Fantastic'
‘Avatar’ Already Mastered For Blu-ray 3D, Director Cameron Says
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Fox has "already mastered" Avatar for release on Blu-ray 3D "and it looks fan-
tastic," director James Cameron said at the Digital Entertainment Group’s Blu-Con 2010 conference Tuesday. Pro-
ducer Jon Landau said Blu-ray will give audiences "the highest-quality 3D" experience available when Avatar is re-
leased in 3D on the format. But neither film maker tipped his hand on when Avatar might be released on Blu-ray 3D.
Cameron bristled at an audience member who asked whether 3D was little more than Hollywood’s "flavor
of the month" and would die just as it did in the early 1950s. "I think we’re way past that," and "it’s a waste of time
to answer a question like that," Cameron said. 3D is "not a flirtation" but "a renaissance that will continue indefi-
nitely," fueled not by movies but by the "conversion to live broadcasts" of sports, music and comedy, he said. The
launch of HDTV "wasn’t a flirtation," Cameron said. It’s now "pretty ubiquitous, and 3D will be the same."
The limitation on the amount of 3D content that can be created is "we don’t have enough cameras" to do
live 3D productions, Cameron said. And there aren't "enough people who know how to use them," he said. Once
those shortages are resolved, 3D will take off "in a really resounding way," Cameron said: "I haven’t seen anything
that didn’t benefit from 3D." He cited Masters Golf coverage as an example of live 3D production that will woo
mass audiences: "And I hate golf."
Clash of the Titans and the recent Harry Potter movie are avid examples of how "you can’t do" 3D conver-
sions on the fly, Cameron said when asked about the market impact of bad 3D. He said he regrets throwing both
those films "under the bus." In those cases, and in others, studios need to learn that 3D can’t be "slapped down as a
layer after the fact," he said. "If you want to do 3D right, you have two choices — shoot the movie in 3D or do a
conversion" that's indistinguishable from one shot in 3D, he said.
Studios are "rising to the occasion" in response to "premature" criticism that the dearth of Blu-ray 3D con-
tent for retail sale is hurting adoption, said Kris Brown, Warner Home Video vice president of worldwide high-def
market expansion. The major studios have decided to make Nov. 16 a red-letter day for Blu-ray 3D, said Brown,
who chairs the DEG’s 3D working group. On that date, studios will release 36 Blu-ray 3D titles, 24 of which will
be available for retail sale, the rest to be bundled under proprietary promotional agreements with individual CE
makers, Brown said. It’s bundles like that which critics say have been crimping Blu-ray 3D software's availability
at retail.
The seven Blu-ray 3D titles that Warner Home Video will release this year, beginning with six releases
Nov. 16, will make it the most aggressive studio on that front, Brown said. "Let’s be clear, bundling is a good
thing," he said. "The issue is, there’s less content on Blu-ray than there was on DVD." He urged CE makers and
studios not to be too restrictive in their bundling deals. That the same two or three Blu-ray 3D titles play as a loop
on retail endcaps will only perpetuate the perception that not enough content is available, Brown said.
Avatar "broke down the wall" by boosting Blu-ray adoption, Fox Home Entertainment President Mike
Dunn said on a panel with other studio home entertainment chiefs. The industry’s Blu-ray shipments for the year
are up about 86 percent but have not been big enough to offset the decline in the DVD business, Dunn said. That’s
likely to change soon, he said. As a result of the Blu-ray player sales growth that Avatar helped spawn, Blu-ray "is
becoming mainstream now," Dunn said. Blu-ray is "one of the fastest-growing consumer electronics goods there
is," he said.
Blu-ray "is a product that customers love," Bill Carr, Amazon vice president of music and video, said in a
retail keynote. "This kind of customer love will take us a long way." But "broad selection is needed to signal that
Blu-ray is here to stay," he said. In breadth of titles, Blu-ray is lagging significantly behind DVD, he said, noting
5. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY—5
that the 25,000 DVD titles released in the format's first five years compared with just under 5,000 Blu-ray titles af-
ter five years. "It will be a great day" when Blu-ray's title count reaches parity with DVD's, he said.
At Amazon, in the first three quarters after customers buy their first Blu-ray disc, their "total video spend"
on Blu-ray and DVD grows fourfold compared with the three quarters preceding that first purchase, he said. The
bad news is that half the dollars they spend are for DVDs, suggesting customers want to buy title on Blu-rays but
opt for the DVD versions because Blu-ray isn’t available, he said. Besides boosting Blu-ray title breadth, reducing
the price gap between DVD and Blu-ray "will drive Blu-ray adoption and growth," Carr said. Amazon data shows
that when there’s a $5 price premium on a Blu-ray title that’s also available on DVD, 75 percent of the unit sales
will be on Blu-ray," he said. When there’s no price premium, Blu-ray’s share of the unit sales grows to 90 percent,
he said. — Paul Gluckman
Entry-Level Device to Take Hit?
Barnes & Noble's Nookcolor Further Blurs Tablet, E-Reader Lines
With tablet PCs and e-readers among the top five gifts expected to ring through cash registers this holiday
season, it's not clear where Barnes & Noble's $249 Nookcolor e-reader will fall in the mix between sub-$200 e-
readers currently on the market and the low-end tablet PCs starting to roll out. Certain to take a hit is Barnes & No-
ble's own $149 Wi-Fi Nook and its $199 3G counterpart, which use an E-Ink display, said analyst Ross Rubin of
NPD Research. Although the Nookcolor "seems like a stronger competitor to the Kindle" than the original Nook,
Rubin said, the "considerable price delta" could limit appeal of the Nookcolor to all but "those hard-core e-reader
customers looking for a bit more multimedia capability," he said.
The Nookcolor, due to reach Barnes & Noble stores, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Books-A-Million Nov. 19,
takes the e-reader to the next level by adding an LG-supplied 7-inch touch-screen said to use the same AH-IPS
screen as the iPad. A spokesman for LG Display said the Nook's 7-inch AH-IPS display is built at LG's Gumi,
South Korea, LCD plant and that the technology boasts a wide field of view and fast response speed. The Nook-
color will support Web-browsing via the Android platform along with video playback, Barnes & Noble said. Built
in is 8 GB of internal memory that could accommodate a combination of media including 1,000 books, 25 color
magazines, 10 newspapers, 50 kids' books, 500 songs and 150 photos, the company said. Storage is expandable via
microSD card, it said.
Also in the 10-inch-and-under display-based device segment, Creative announced two Android-based
"entertainment tablets" in 7-inch and 10-inch sizes, raising the question of how many portable screen-based de-
vices consumers will be willing to buy. The music and video-oriented Creative ZiiO, dubbed the world’s first "apt-
X enabled" touch-screen tablet, supports the Kindle e-book app, a company spokeswoman told us, and allows users
to check e-mail, watch movies, play games and download applications from the Internet and Creative's Zii Store.
The apt-X codec allows users to stream hi-fi stereo via Bluetooth to compatible speakers and headphones, the com-
pany said. Availability is December with suggested retail prices of $249-$319 depending on size and storage.
Rubin of NPD says Web-browsing e-readers could "cannibalize" sales of some of the small-screen portable
devices including digital picture frames, portable DVD players and even some in-vehicle entertainment systems,
"because you don't need them installed." As more-robust products come out, low-end Android tablets with Web
browsers and video players in the $150 range could be affected, if they have "slow processors, resistive screens and
don't deliver the iPad experience," he said.
According to Insight Media, tablet PC sales will reach 94 million units by 2015 and general-purpose e-book
readers will hit 26 million units. A report by the firm covered general-purpose e-books, e-newspapers, e-textbooks,
e-professional reference books and tablets. The report concluded that the tablet is a more general-purpose product
6. 6—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2010
that will serve the needs of multimedia users and will "cannibalize sales of netbook products as well as upgrades
from smart phones."
Citing the thin line between e-readers and tablets, the report's authors concluded it's "not clear today if con-
sumers really see the tablet primarily as a reading device or if other use modes are more important." The near fu-
ture of the tablet is "crucial for the further development of this category," they said, as the focus shifts from the
early adopter to mainstream customers. They said an emerging trend is that casual book and document readers will
be "happy with a tablet while power users will prefer a dedicated product." — Rebecca Day, Mark Seavy
Order Delays
Microvision Readying Lower-Priced Pico Projector
Microvision is readying a lower-priced new version of its ShowWX pico-projector that increases brightness
50 percent, as the company seeks to recover from a key customer's decision to delay shipment of a product. Micro-
vision didn’t release specs for the new model. The current ShowWX projector is sold at a loss at a price above
$500, company officials have said. It offers 10 lumens and 854x480 resolution. Microvision has aired plans for
720p model with 15 lumens that features ASICs from STMicroelectronics and Toshiba. The projector will ship late
this month, CEO Alexander Tokman said in a conference call.
A customer that placed $11.9 million in orders for Microvision’s 7x42x20mm MEMs light engine post-
poned delivery to the first-half of 2011 from September of a high-end multimedia player containing it. The first
revenue from the agreement was to arrive in late Q3, and additional money was due in Q4, company officials said
(CED Aug 9 p5). The product was delayed as the customer moved to switch the product to an Android operating
system from Microsoft's, Microvision Chief Financial Officer Jeff Wilson said. The customer accounted for about
$12 million of $18 million in back orders that Microvision had Sept. 30. The other $6 million was for the stand-
alone ShowWX pico-projector.
A second customer that was private labeling an accessory projector cut deliveries in Q3 as it required Mi-
crovision get Apple iPhone 4 and iPad certification for the device, Wilson said. The customer is believed to be
Uniden. The projector, developed before the release of iPhone 4 and iPad, was redesigned to gain Apple certifica-
tion, Wilson said. The delay and reduced order slashed $2.2 million from Microvision’s Q3 sales, company offi-
cials said.
And Microvision’s frequency-doubled green laser supplier Corning is ending development efforts. Corn-
ing’s decision, made as development shifts to direct green lasers, won’t affect Microvision’s projector business,
Tokman said. Corning struggled with yield issues, and Osram came on as a second supplier in March. Osram is
expected to deliver 10,000 to 15,000 green lasers a month in Q4, and 150,000 to 200,000 in 2011, all for Microvi-
sion, Tokman said.
The first direct green lasers are expected to arrive starting in late 2011 from some of the five compa-
nies developing them, Tokman said. Frequency-doubled green lasers use infrared manipulated to create green
light, a process that reduces wavelength. The conversion requires multiple components held to very tight tol-
erances, making their manufacture "more challenging," Tokman said. Direct green lasers are single chip prod-
ucts that simplify design and manufacturing and will cost about 20 percent less than frequency-doubled ver-
sions that sell for up to $20 depending on order size, Tokman said. Microvision received green laser evalua-
tion samples from two manufacturers last week and integrated them in cellphone prototypes, he said. The im-
ages from the direct laser-equipped cellphones were "stable and vibrant" and exceeded "all expectations for
such an early integration," Tokman said.
7. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY—7
Microvision’s Q3 net loss widened to $11.9 million from $11.5 million a year earlier, as the company took
at $2 million write down on inventory, tied both to the current projector's being sold at a loss and to materials in
stock that will be obsolete as new products are introduced, Wilson said. Revenue rose to $1.3 million from
$924,000 a year ago. Microvision ended the quarter with $21.3 million in cash, enough to carry the company to
April, Wilson said. But the company also has raised $12.4 million in cash through its equity financing facility,
which stood at $47 million Sept. 30, Wilson said. Microvision restructured sales and marketing operations during
the quarter, hiring "several high caliber" senior executives and increasing the number of distribution points for
ShowWX to 19 from 11.
Microvision received two contracts from the U.S. Navy and Air Force worth $1 million total, Tokman said.
The money will be used to develop eyewear as well as an enhanced laser display system, Tokman said. It also de-
livered MEMs-based head-up display (HUD) demonstrators to two automakers. Microvision didn’t identify the
auto makers, but the company has worked with Visteon in the past. Motorola also has changed "internal develop-
ment" away from the cellphone/projector it was working on with Microvision, Microvision officials said. "We are
trying to accommodate their other internal problems that they need to rework before they can focus on something
like this," Tokman said. — Mark Seavy
Dims CFLs, LEDs
Lutron Bows Multi-Bulb Dimmer Technology For Incandescent Bulb Phase-Out
In advance of the federal government's energy efficiency requirements that will result in a phase-out of in-
candescent light bulbs, starting with 100-watt bulbs in 2012 followed by 75-watt bulbs in 2013 and 60-watt bulbs in
2014, Lutron introduced a new in-wall dimmer that controls the four major residential light types. The dimmer
works with halogen, compact fluorescent and LED bulbs, in addition to incandescents, said Michael Maholick,
marketing director for Lutron's Residential Products and Solutions group, who said the company is trying to "stay
ahead of the market."
Compact fluorescents, and newer LED bulbs, have been difficult to dim because they're not designed to
common standards and "voltage fluctuations differ," Maholick told us. Lutron claims its HED phase-adaptive dim-
ming technology alleviates many of the issues that occurred in the past when trying to dim CFL and LED bulbs in-
cluding: reduced dimming range, light "drop outs," lights not turning on from low levels and lights turning off un-
expectedly. The dimmers can operate a mixed load of light sources, such as halogen and LED, on the same circuit,
Lutron said.
Lutron first announced the technology at CEDIA in its HomeWorks QS and RadioRA 2 high-end residen-
tial lighting control systems due to roll out next year (GED Sept 24 p1). The wall-mount and lamp dimmers will be
available over the next two weeks in Lutron Diva and Credenza lines at home improvement stores, lighting show-
rooms, electrical distributors and direct from Lutron's online store. Suggested retail prices are $39.75 for the in-
wall dimmers and $15 for the Credenza lamp dimmers. Maholick said those prices are in line with its standard in-
candescent dimmer prices. The company said one dimmer can save consumers $50 a year in electrical bills.
The new dimmers are said to "reliably control the widest range of dimmable light sources" available in the
market today, and Lutron has put in place a testing program to certify CFL and LED bulbs from various makers
that are compatible with the dimmers. According to Maholick, new models are added regularly. As of Oct. 15,
Lutron had tested and certified 85 bulbs from suppliers including Cree, Ecosmart, GE, Halo, Lighting Science,
Philips, Sylvania and TCP as dimmable by the Credenza and Diva devices. The company has to get the dimmer
UL-certified for each bulb listed on the website, Maholick said. Not all bulbs submitted for testing have made the
list, he said, saying "quite a few don't meet spec." The list is published and updated monthly on the Lutron website,
he said. The tests are based on protocols from the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), he said.
8. 8—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2010
With the popularity of LED lights growing quickly, Lutron felt the need to develop a dimming solution and
educate consumers about the upcoming changes in residential lighting technology, Maholick said. He wouldn't say
how much Lutron has spent on the testing program, but it was a "significant investment." Throughout the lighting
chain, from light engineers to consumers, "People don't know how to dim the new light sources," he said. The
company wants to "make it simple for consumers to future-proof their homes," he said. Citing NEMA figures, Ma-
holick said there are more than 150 million residential dimmers in use in the U.S. and LEDs are predicted to over-
take the bulb market sometime between 2015 and 2020. No trade-in program for dimmers or bulbs is currently in
place. Maholick said the company is looking at "programs like that." — Rebecca Day
E-Commerce
Wal-Mart and its Vudu service are bundling a digital copy of Toy Story 3 with the purchase of a DVD or
Blu-ray version. Purchasers enter a download code on Vudu’s website for access to a digital copy that streams to
Vudu-equipped devices including Toshiba TVs and the forthcoming D-Link Boxee set-top box. Wal-Mart is sell-
ing the Blu-ray version of Toy Story 3 for $24.98. The DVD title goes for $15.98.
Digital TV
Demand for mobile TV tuners in Asia and Latin America will drive annual global sales for them to more
than $400 million by 2014, In-Stat said. “The biggest problem for mobile TV services is that they are developing
on a country-by-country basis,” said Gerry Kaufhold, an In-Stat analyst. “The fragmentation of standards in differ-
ent regions with different adoption rates poses a challenge for technology manufacturers developing unique decoder
technologies for each segment.”
Industry Notes
China Mobile will join the Linux Foundation. The operator is the first from China to sign on. Last week,
the foundation announced plans to merge with another nonprofit, the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum, which
will become a technical work group under the foundation. The foundation has about 100 members. China Mobile
has 560 million customers.
Formats
The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences gave Engineering Emmy Awards to Panasonic, Phil-
ips, Sony and TDK for developing the blue-laser optical systems used to record and distribute Blu-ray Disc technol-
ogy. According to the companies, more than 1.4 billion pre-recorded Blu-ray discs, 188 million Blu-ray record-
able/rewritable discs, 50 million Blu-ray players and recorders, 41 million PS3 units and 25 million Blu-ray PC
readers and writers have been produced.
Companies
Harman International has booked $2 billion in orders for its new in-vehicle infotainment system since its
introduction a year ago, ending fiscal Q1 with $12 billion in back orders, CEO Dinesh Paliwal said Tuesday in a
conference call. Among these were new orders from BMW, Chrysler, Fiat, Toyota North America and Mercedes
Benz. The infotainment platform is built around Nuance's voice recognition and Texas Instruments and Freescale
processors. The system, designed for midpriced vehicles, was built around Harman's QNX operating system. It
dispenses with rear-seat entertainment products found in more-expensive models. Harman sold the QNX business
