U.S. buying group ProSource formed an ongoing strategic alliance with Ontario, Canada-based Power Audio Video Group, it said Thursday. Aligning the two buying groups positions them to address the growing trend among CE vendors to manage the U.S. and Canada as a single market, they said. “The continuing changes in the economics of our industry are demanding new standards of operations, new methods of creating and sustaining business growth, and the development of new opportunities for the entire industry,” said ProSource CEO David Workman. “The independent dealer channel is a prominent distribution channel for new technologies and a North American alliance will hopefully result in a stronger voice at the table with suppliers on behalf of our respective members.”

The ZigBee Alliance ratified ZigBee 3.0, opening the door to improved communication and interoperability among products in connected homes, intelligent buildings and smart cities, it said Wednesday. Following a year of testing and development, ZigBee 3.0 extends from the physical to the application layer, and includes certification and branding “for improved interoperability across a growing range of market segments,” said the nonprofit alliance. It's compatible with existing ZigBee Home Automation and ZigBee Light Link standards, and “unifies all previous application-specific ZigBee device descriptions, behaviors and profiles into a common applications layer” that supports IoT product development for smart homes, buildings and neighborhood area networks, it said. The ZigBee Alliance also said it's collaborating with EnOcean Alliance to develop an open, global specification for energy-harvesting wireless communication technology for interoperable, self-powered IoT sensors. The effort will bring together EnOcean equipment profiles (EEPs) for sub-GHz networking with ZigBee 3.0 in the worldwide 2.4 GHz frequency band, called “the key to the consumer market,” by EnOcean Alliance Chairman Graham Martin. Defining technical specs for worldwide wireless energy harvesting gives members of both alliances access to new regions and applications, Martin said. The joint effort will bring energy-harvesting wireless communication to more applications in the IoT and consumer arenas, said the alliances. ZigBee 3.0 enables battery-free devices to securely join networks across various energy harvesting applications, they said. The collaboration will provide a foundation to bring data to IoT frameworks of other industry initiatives and facilitate interoperable communication from the sensor to the cloud, they said. The alliances will create a technical task force to define specs required to combine EEPs with ZigBee 3.0, which operates in the IEEE 802.15.4 2.4 GHz standard.

The Consumer Technology Association urged the FCC to make changes to equipment certification rules aimed at keeping commission-certified labs in business. CTA endorsed the thrusts of petitions for reconsideration or clarification by the Telecommunications Industry Association and Motorola Solutions. CTA urged the FCC to clarify the path for re-qualification of test labs in nonmutual recognition agreement countries that were either accredited or listed under Section 2.948 of agency rules. CTA also encouraged the FCC to establish a two-year transition period during which Section 2.948-listed labs would be allowed to submit data in support of certification applications. “The Commission should act promptly to ensure that the dynamic consumer technology industry continues to have access to a sufficient quantity of FCC-recognized laboratories that help ensure that consumers have the most innovative, safe, and reliable technologies available at market speed,” CTA said in docket 13-44.

Cord-cutting trends and network experimentation with lower advertising loads only explain some of the declining market values of large public content companies -- a $57 billion drop over the past 13 months, a Needham analyst wrote investors Wednesday. Investors also worry that multichannel video programming distributors are undermining their own revenue growth by putting identical content on less lucrative distribution platforms, said Laura Martin. Content companies putting their content also on digital platforms with low or no ad loads "are undermining their most valuable asset -- the dual revenue stream business model of linear TV -- because they retrain a consumer to expect high content quality at a significantly lower cost to that consumer," she said. When VOD contains full ad loads that can't be fast forwarded through, those viewers "are more valuable" than DVR views, she wrote. Meanwhile, 15 percent of ads are being blocked by consumers, and Apple's announcement this fall it would enable ad blocking apps points to accelerated adoption of consumer ad blocking, Needham said. But ad blocking "makes it less likely that the online video ecosystem will be a successful disrupter of the TV ecosystem," said the analyst, saying any possible demise of TV will come from incumbent companies shifting viewing identical content from high-value linear TV viewing hours to lower value digital platforms. A la carte channel offerings ultimately will likely account for less than 10 percent of total U.S. TV revenue "owing to the 'tyranny of choice,'" Needham said: "Too many choices overwhelm consumers and often leads to lower customer satisfaction levels or, worse, stops them from buying anything at all."

BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk downgraded Verizon from buy to neutral, despite continuing growth and industry-leading low churn. “Despite all these positive dynamics in wireless, which represents over 80 percent of Verizon’s EBITDA, its stock has done little over the past 2-3 years and it is increasingly difficult to see how our outlook for the company could improve further to deliver upside to existing investor expectations,” Piecyk wrote investors Tuesday. He also expressed concern about Verizon’s overall wireless network strategy: “Verizon management appears to be digging in their heels on a wireless network strategy reliant on small cell densification and the future use of higher-band spectrum, even though Verizon does not own that spectrum and it has largely been considered to be unusable for mobile communications. This adds risk to estimates.” Verizon shares closed up 10 cents Tuesday at $45.55.

ProSource added 17 custom integrators to its membership, the buying group said Tuesday. New ProSource members are: Advanced Esi of Sarasota, Florida; Artisan Systems, Scottsdale, Arizona; Avid Home Theater, Danville, California; Bright Audio Video, Fort Mill, South Carolina; Chesapeake Systems Service, Annapolis Junction, Maryland; Crown Audio Video, Dallas; Edt Solutions, Augusta, Georgia; Executive Electronics of Southwest Florida, Bonita Springs, Florida; Hot Wired Audio Video, Denver, North Carolina; JJ Orion, Blaine, Minnesota; Liaison Home Automation, Mount Zion, Illinois; Lifestyle Integrations, Westfield, Indiana; Pacific Audio & Communications, Lihue, Hawaii; Sound Ideas Home Theater Design, Fort Worth, Texas; Superior Sight & Sound, Jacksonville, Florida; Treat Your Home, Charlotte, North Carolina; and Ultra Fidelis, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

ShowStoppers will produce “official press events” at IFA through the September 2018 Berlin show, under a three-year renewal announced Tuesday. The renewal is the third since IFA and ShowStoppers first collaborated at the 2008 show, the announcement said. ShowStoppers will also support IFA’s global news conference April 17-20 in Hong Kong and IFA’s inaugural CE China show in Shenzhen April 20-22 (see 1511250013), the announcement said. IFA 2016 opens Sept. 2 at Messe Berlin fairgrounds for a six-day run.

NCTA will distort facts and “say almost anything” to prevent competition to leased set-top boxes, TiVo said in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in FCC docket 15-64 responding to a recent NCTA filing (see 1512020050) that argued that the company was trying to manipulate the agency to create more targets for patent litigation. TiVo has “initiated” only four patent lawsuits, the company said. “Contrary to NCTA’s assertion, the majority of TiVo’s revenues come from services provided to MVPDs and retail customers." With consolidation of multichannel video programming distributors on the rise, “giving consumers a choice of user interface to access their pay TV programming” is increasingly important, TiVo said. Increasing set-top competition would benefit MVPDs by increasing “pay TV subscriber satisfaction” and making cord cutting less attractive, TiVo said. “Nonetheless, NCTA has chosen to oppose any meaningful consumer choice by suggesting that TiVo, which has approximately one percent of the set-top box market share, is trying to use patent litigation to harm device competition.” NCTA didn’t comment.

The Consumer Video Choice Coalition-backed downloadable security proposal doesn’t require a “second box” along with a set-top box, despite what pay-TV carriers have said, Public Knowledge told FCC Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, Chairman Tom Wheeler’s aide Gigi Sohn, and Media Bureau staff in a meeting Wednesday, according to an ex parte filing in docket 15-64. Depending on how multichannel video programming distributors “choose to implement support, customers could require no consumer premises equipment beyond a smart television or a cable modem, which is already required for broadband,” PK said. Pay-TV carriers are also incorrect in portraying the proposal as a “technology mandate,” PK said. “Since the competitive navigation proposal does not mandate any form of common reliance, MVPDs would have to change nothing about their proprietary set-top boxes and nothing would change for consumers who are not interested in purchasing competitive devices.” Third-party devices wouldn’t endanger MVPD licensing agreements, PK said. “Under the competitive navigation proposal, MVPDs would remain as free as ever to design boxes and interfaces however they like and to enter into whatever content agreements seem appropriate.”

VTech hired FireEye’s Mandiant cyber forensic team to help investigate the recent cyberattack that resulted in the theft of more than 11 million parent and children's records (see 1512010041). VTech said in a Thursday news release that Mandiant will review how the toy company "handles customer information and clearly define ways in which the group can further strengthen the security of its user data."