India-based artificial intelligence company Mad Street Den raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round, a company news release said Friday. MSD is a cloud-based platform that uses “vision modules” for e-commerce and other tech industries, including gaming, it said. GrowX Ventures and Reservoir Investment Managers’ Exfinity Fund -- both based in India -- provided the financing, MSD said.

Spotify added a feature called Touch Preview. Designed to simplify the music search process, it allows users to preview a song, playlist, album or artist before hitting play, Spotify said. Those who like what they hear can save a track to their music library with a new swipe feature, said the streaming music provider. If they want to listen later, users can swipe to the left to save music to their library or swipe right to place it in queue. “For decades, music fans have had to rely on a rather clumsy way of scanning through songs, albums and playlists,” said Vice President-Product Sten Garmark. Touch Preview takes music discovery “to the next level,” he said, and results in “less time looking for the perfect music, and more time actually listening to it.” The new features rolled out to iOS users Thursday and will be available on other platforms soon, Spotify said.

Ballistic Case, which supplies protective cases for smartphones and tablets, is in “exploratory” talks with Duracell about a multiproduct line, “potentially launching” this year, that may include “ultra-protective power case solutions” for iPhones and Android devices, the companies said Friday.

Samsung pushed SUHD technology, new platforms for its Milk content franchise and home appliances at its news conference Monday before CES. Joe Stinziano, executive vice president, took the wraps off the company’s first SUHD TV, an 88-inch model dubbed the JS-9500. The technology is based on Samsung’s proprietary nano-crystal semiconductors, which Stinziano said delivers the “highest color purity and light efficiency available today.” He also touted brightness and contrast and said SUHD delivers 64 times the “color expression” of conventional TVs and twice the number of adjustment points for display accuracy. Samsung collaborated with 20th Century Fox to optimize content to meet premium quality SUHD standards, Baxter said, which will allow consumers to have an “unrivaled” UHD experience. SUHD is a combination of hardware and software advances, according to Stinziano. Wonjin Lee, executive vice president-service business, said Samsung launched the first smart TV seven years ago, and mart TVs have become nearly standard today. “Soon we won’t be talking about smart TVs anymore,” he said, comparing the prevalence of smart TVs to that of color TVs. He cited the Tizen operating system that’s the platform for 2015 TVs that can be controlled by remote or gestures. Lee also cited the integration between Samsung TVs and mobile devices, saying at a press of a button a user could go from watching content on a tablet to watching on TV using Bluetooth Low-Energy on 2015 smart TVs. The user interface in 2015 smart TVs offers “seamless integration” across videos, games and the Web, giving “more choice than ever on the TV screen,” he said. The 2015 TVs will borrow from the second-screen experience to provide ancillary viewing information such as stats for sports so the viewer doesn’t have to look away, Lee said. Samsung Chief Operating Officer Tim Baxter said the company’s Milk Music and Milk Video streaming media services will be available as apps on Samsung smart TVs, and Milk Music will be available on PCs. Baxter also unveiled Milk VR, which he said delivers a “daily stream of 360-degree videos.” Milk VR is available for download from the online Oculus store. Samsung is launching with 30 titles, he said. Partners include the NBA, Matador, Acura and Mountain Dew, according to a slide presentation. In Ultra HD TV, Baxter said Samsung secured 60 percent market share in the U.S. last year, and half of its Ultra HD sales were curved models “proving that consumers see the value of the immersive TV experience.” In 2015, Baxter said, the Ultra HD market is expected to grow by a factor of four, to a third of all TV sales.

After a disappointing Samsung Q3 earnings report, which saw mobile division sales plummet 74 percent (see 1410300033), the company announced Wednesday that effective Jan. 1 it's combining Samsung Electronics America and Samsung Telecommunications America into a single U.S. organization comprising consumer electronics, mobile and enterprise business. According to a statement, integrating the two organizations into a single Samsung Electronics America “will give customers and partners the advantage of a single point of contact.” In the new organization, Gregory Lee will continue as president and CEO of Samsung Electronics North America, and Tim Baxter has been named president and chief operating officer of the new, integrated Samsung Electronics America, Samsung said. The new organization will focus on “aggressive growth in new strategic initiatives,” Samsung said, and by bringing together all of the company’s branded consumer and enterprise business operations, it will “better serve” U.S. customers through “strengthened business operations and collaboration across market segments.” A single organization will provide “expanded career development and mobility programs for Samsung’s growing workforce,” the company said. U.S. offices in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey; Richardson, Texas; and San Jose, California, will continue to operate, it said. Questions to Samsung on possible layoffs, areas of focus for the new organization and any changes to Samsung's smartphone business weren’t immediately answered.

WakaWaka, the Dutch-based supplier of a $79 solar-powered LED lamp and smartphone charger of the same name, thinks it’s still possible to make a profitable go of a philanthropic business model that’s based on giving one unit away for every unit it sells, CEO Camille van Gestel told us at CES Unveiled New York Tuesday. "WakaWaka means ‘shine bright’ in Swahili, and I’m not sure Shakira knew that when she did that song at the World Cup four years ago," van Gestel said of the Colombian pop star. At $79, "you buy one, you give one," van Gestel said. To achieve profit on that model, "it’s still possible, but it’s challenging," he said. "Specifically from the bricks and mortar perspective, margins are under pressure. So we look at a selective retail environment for next year. We’re looking for strategic partnerships with retailers that really appreciate what we do and want to help us get the story out, and maybe accept just a little bit less. So we all make this happen all together. Once we get more volume, we can further decrease our production costs, then it will be a much healthier business for retailers." Profitably speaking, "it works, but barely," van Gestel said. Some "very high-profile" retailers will carry the WakaWaka in time for the holiday selling season, but NDAs bar him from revealing their names, he said. For now, WakaWaka is available from the company’s online store, and from Amazon and a few other e-commerce merchants, he said. "With each purchase, you get a unique code that you can punch in at the WakaWaka website. That’s where you can select where your ‘give one’ goes. And we track and trace where that ‘give one’ goes. We get testimonials from users, from Syrian refugees, from Ebola health workers." Citing data from the International Rescue Committee, "one of the parties we work with," van Gestel said WakaWaka "is the most valued nonfood item in Syria. I would never have thought that -- more than blankets or shelter or anything like that. But it’s extremely rewarding to be able to do this, and it’s our passion. It’s the reason why we are in the States and selling in Europe in order to make more impact. The 1.2 billion people who are out there and have no access to electricity -- that’s our goal and our mission to provide light to them before 2030."

RealD’s plan by 2015 to commercialize "intelligent backlight" technology for smartphones and tablets through third-party licensees is off the table now that the company has begun evaluating options for restructuring its research and development operations, spokesman Rick Heineman emailed us Monday. "Given we are in the middle of this evaluation process we are not providing updates on our timelines." The restructuring goal will be reducing future R&D "capital outlays," partnering with "outside third parties to speed the path to commercialization" and maximizing the company’s "future economic participation," CEO Michael Lewis said on a quarterly earnings call Monday. "We expect the outcome of this process to result in a further streamlining of our organization and additional efficiencies in our cost structure." RealD is "extremely serious about our cost reductions," Lewis warned. Two quarters ago (see 1406060056), Lewis described the intelligent backlight initiative, developed in RealD’s R&D lab in Boulder, Colorado, as "a collective technology that has both benefits to stereoscopic viewing as well as the added benefit of power savings." RealD expects "to have a product with partners available in the marketplace and start to generate revenue in calendar 2015," Lewis said then, refusing to answer other questions about the initiative. RealD thinks its looming R&D restructuring will enhance shareholder value, so the RealDs board has decided unanimously "not to pursue" the offer from New York investment firm Starboard Value to buy the company and take it private, Lewis said Monday. Starboard doesn’t think RealD "is best positioned to execute against its future opportunities as a public company," the company said last month when it made the offer (see 1410030027). But RealD thinks its low market value "does not adequately reflect the strength of our core cinema platform and upcoming film slate," or "the value inherent" in its patent portfolio and the changes being made to reduce R&D expenses, Lewis said Monday.

Samsung profit was down sharply in Q3, largely as a result of declines in its mobile division, the company said Thursday. Samsung said net profit was down 49 percent from the year-earlier quarter to 4.14 trillion won ($4 billion). The biggest culprit was a 74 percent decline in Samsung’s mobile division, to 1.75 trillion won, where profit was the lowest since Q2 2011. In a call with analysts, Robert Yi, senior vice president-investor relations, said new wraparound screens, which debuted last month with Samsung’s Galaxy Note Edge, should help the company regain market share. Yi said the product opened to “rave” reviews on its design. The company also released the Note 4 in early October, he said. “It also received high marks for its high-resolution display and powerful multitasking capability.” Samsung shipped 102 million mobile phones in the quarter, Yi said. The company had 24.7 percent of global shipments last quarter, down from 35 percent a year ago, according to data released Thursday by Strategy Analytics. Apple is in second place with 12.3 percent of the market.

Dolby didn’t immediately respond to questions about a change in plans to ship a Dolby Vision TV this year, after a comment by CEO Kevin Yeaman on an earnings call Thursday saying the company now expects to ship the first Dolby Vision TV “early in calendar 2015.” Yeaman said Dolby Vision can “enhance the imaging experience across a wide range of use cases” and that in the coming year the company will continue efforts to build out the Dolby Vision ecosystem, including content creation, delivery and playback. At IFA, Dolby showed a simulation of Dolby Vision (see 1409040067) comparing a standard TV to one with Dolby Vision enabled by an offline mapping solution through a computer. Actual Dolby Vision TVs will have the algorithm built in, the company said. At the time, Dolby was working with silicon vendors to integrate Dolby Vision into a chipset for real-time mapping, with Sigma Designs slated as the first vendor with a system on a chip (SoC) integrating Dolby Vision natively, according to Roland Vlaicu, Dolby vice president-consumer imaging. The SoC was due out early next year, Vlaicu said, but the first Dolby Vision TVs were expected to use more expensive field-programmable gate-array chip solutions. Mary Miller, Sigma Design senior director-corporate marketing, said at IFA that the company’s SX7 SoC could accommodate Dolby Vision, but it wasn’t expected to be deployed for Dolby Vision TVs until after the January CES. Dolby is pitching Dolby Vision as a technology that makes “spectacular highlights” look closer to what they look like in real life, Vlaicu said at the time. Combining high dynamic range and wider color gamut allow more saturated colors at higher brightness levels, he said. “Today, if you want to show a bright area of the image, because of the limited range you have, you have the choice of either showing it in a saturated way that’s fairly dim, or you show it bright, but then unavoidably, all the colors start to gravitate toward the white point, which means they start to get washed out,” he said.

A declining market for iPad shipments and a reduction in channel inventory ahead of new iPad launches contributed to a 19 percent falloff in sales in Logitech’s tablet and other accessories category in fiscal Q2, to $28 million, the company said in an earnings statement Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1oxuOYv). Unit shipments in the category, however, were up 15 percent, driven by protective cases for the iPad and keyboard cases for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, Logitech said. The tablets category is part of Logitech’s retail growth category, which grew 2 percent to $473 million for the quarter, driven by 10 percent growth in sales for PC gaming products in the Americas and EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and growth in portable Bluetooth speakers, which doubled over the year-ago quarter, the company said. The UE Boom portable speaker was the company’s biggest seller in Q2 across all categories, Logitech said, with sales jumping from $20 million to $49 million for the quarter. Harmony remote sales grew from $13 million to $19 million largely on growth of Harmony Ultimate Home, which includes a color touch-screen remote and hub to enable integration and control of up to 15 compatible home automation devices, the company said. Logitech sales slipped to $530 million in fiscal Q2, from $532 million in the year-ago quarter, while profit grew to $36 million, from $14 million, it said.