SiriusXM bought PayTollo, a GPS mobile payment platform, said SiriusXM Thursday. It adds transportation tolling to Sirius unit's Automatic offerings, said Joe Verbrugge, the parent's general manager-emerging business. The company offers an install-it-yourself adapter and mobile app that enables most vehicles to become connected so drivers have access to services including crash alerts, roadside assistance, real-time vehicle location monitoring and sharing, vehicle performance monitoring, recall notifications and service reminders. PayTollo's mobile payment platform for tolls and bridges is used in California and Florida.
Vuzix said it amended a 10-year noncompete restriction with TDG Acquisition, which bought its defense division in 2012, and will pursue opportunities for its smart glasses and waveguide optics with first responders, DOD and security organizations. “Vuzix has always seen great opportunity in the first responder, defense and homeland security markets but saw better near-term opportunities in enterprise and consumer," said Vuzix CEO Paul Travers. The added markets have global reach “and exceed millions of equivalent personnel,” said the company.
Comcast added multilingual English and Spanish language support for its Xfinity X1 voice remote. The company processes more than 6 million Spanish-language commands monthly for customers who set their primary X1 language as Spanish, blogged Lead Engineer Raul Guerra Paredes Wednesday. “Unlike a personal electronic device like a phone, which can just be set to a mode where it only takes Spanish-language inputs and gives only Spanish responses, we knew that many of our Spanish-speaking customers lived in homes where both English and Spanish are spoken interchangeably.” Human speech patterns add complexity, Paredes said. Comcast engineers built technology so that when a customer makes a command, the voice platform queries English and Spanish voice databases simultaneously, he said. “We make manual changes to ensure we are capturing the most popular commands and train our [artificial intelligence] and machine learning algorithms to continuously improve." Some 23 million Xfinity customers have used voice remotes, issuing more than 3.5 billion voice commands in the first half of 2018. In both languages, requests for free movies top the list of voice commands, it said.
New in-ear headphones from Sennheiser were certified by spatial computing platform company Magic Leap to give users control over their sound world, said the audio company Tuesday. Sennheiser’s Ambeo AR headphones, expected to be available next month for $250 through Magic Leap, will let developers and creators build experiences where real-world sounds blend with virtual audio, Sennheiser said. They can choose how much of outside sound, captured by the headphones’ built-in mics, blends into the spatial audio experience, it said, so "developers can create truly immersive and social experiences.”
Amazon’s coming Fire TV Stick 4K has Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support, the company said Wednesday. It responds to customers’ requests for a compact and “complete 4K solution,” said Marc Whitten, Amazon Fire TV vice president. It incorporates new antenna technology, a quad-core processor and 802.11ac Wi-Fi, said to deliver a robust streaming experience even in congested network environments. HDTV antennas also are available in a bundled deal.
Display Supply Chain Consultants forecasts the display industry will ship 3.1 million foldable units globally next year after Q1 debut of foldable smartphones from Samsung and Huawei, said the company Wednesday. By 2022, DSCC sees the foldable market for all applications at 63 million units, with such displays then a nearly a $9 billion market.
Google added an aqua model to its popular Home Mini portfolio that's due in Walmart and the Google Store later this month. In a Tuesday blog post, the company didn’t give a price for the light blue Mini, which joins chalk, charcoal and coral models, each $49. Despite Google’s dabble in color, the off-white version appears to be most popular at Google Store, where interested shoppers are invited to join the waitlist for the out-of-stock item. Google Home Mini, which took an attractive dip to $34.99 at various stores in July for Amazon’s Prime Day event (see 1807130051), jumped to the top of the list in Strategy Analytics' most recent tally of smart speaker shipments worldwide. Global smart speaker shipments reached 11.7 million units in Q2, topping $1 billion in revenue, SA reported, with Google Home Mini owning 20 percent share on 2.3 million units shipped. Amazon’s similarly priced and discounted Echo Dot was a close second, shipping 2.2 million units for 18 percent share, it said. Amazon’s Echo came in third at 1.4 million units for 12 percent share, and Google Home tied with Alibaba's Tmall Genie in fourth, selling 800,000 units each for 7 percent share. Apple’s $349 HomePod topped market value rankings with 16 percent share of worldwide revenue, SA said.
Bluesound's new Gen 2i platform adds dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Apple AirPlay 2 support, upgraded Bluetooth codecs and other upgrades by software update. Users can stream nearly all sound from an iPhone, iPad or Mac to their wireless multiroom Bluesound system, said the Lenbrook brand. All BluOS users who update to the 3.0 operating system can access new music services and an easier guided set-up process, said the brand Monday.
Smart speakers with voice assistants will penetrate 47 percent of U.S. broadband homes by 2022, said Parks Associates Thursday. Its surveys found 43 percent of U.S. broadband homes consider voice control “an important feature when selecting their next streaming media player or smart TV."