Chinese consumer tech and content giant LeEco, which is set to announce its formal entry into the U.S. market Wednesday (see 1609300064), will ship 25 million smartphones globally this year and become the 11th largest vendor worldwide in 2016, Strategy Analytics said in a Tuesday report. LeEco is the world’s fastest-growing major smartphone player, “due to cost-competitive hardware, improving distribution, and a growing ecosystem of media content,” said the report. LeEco shipped only 3.9 million smartphones in 2015, it said. “LeEco is in the process of building a multi-platform ecosystem, using smartphones, smart TVs and other hardware products to distribute its growing media portfolio,” said Strategy Analytics. “LeEco is sometimes called the Netflix of China, due to its compelling range of local Chinese video and other content. It remains to be seen whether LeEco can replicate its China success across the US, India or elsewhere, due to local tastes or copyright barriers, but LeEco is clearly growing at a very rapid rate and the vendor is an emerging threat to mass-market smartphone rivals such as Alcatel, Huawei and Samsung.”

ZTE began taking preorders Monday for the Axon 7 Mini, a scaled-down 5.2-inch version of its Axon 7 smartphone, it said in a Monday announcement. The $299 no-contract phone will be sold through Amazon, B&H Photo Video, Best Buy, Newegg and direct from ZTE in platinum gray, with Best Buy having an exclusive on the gold version for 60 days. Features include an AMOLED display, dual front-facing speakers, Dolby Atmos sound, microSD card slot, 16-megapixel rear camera and 8-megapixel front camera and all-metal body. The Axon 7 Mini has a two-year warranty.

Americase, which is supplying the thermally lined “return kits” for consumers to ground ship their recalled Samsung Galaxy Note7s back to where they bought their devices (see 1610130044), is “precluded from disclosing any information related to Samsung’s recall,” CEO Robby Kinsala emailed us Saturday. But the “DOT-SP 16011" special permit revision that Americase was granted Oct. 5 from the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration was “not related to Samsung in any way,” Kinsala said. The revision, the fourth such agency revision authorizing Americase to distribute specially designed boxes to consumers for safely ground-shipping damaged or defective lithium-ion batteries, was “only a clerical revision by PHMSA," he said. The revision "did not affect the operational conditions of the special permit nor did it change anything” about the Sept. 15 recall of the original Note7s that “was already underway,” or the recall of the replacement Note7s, which wasn't announced until Oct. 13, he said. “Americase was granted the special permit by PHMSA before the Note 7 issues started, therefore the thermal boxes were already authorized for distribution to consumers for the ground transport of damaged or defective lithium ion batteries,” he said. “This is not the first time these thermal boxes have been utilized for a recall. And no, I can’t mention who the other recalls were for.” A copy of the DOT-SP 16011 special permit, printed on PHMSA letterhead, sealed inside a plastic sleeve and affixed to the return kit's outermost Americase "recovery box," is plainly visible in the video Samsung released Oct. 13 instructing consumers how to pack and ground ship their recalled Note7s to their place of purchase.

Samsung slashed its Q3 operating profit forecast by a third to cover the "impact" of recalling and scrapping the Galaxy Note7, the company said in a Wednesday announcement. "After recent incidents and in consideration of our consumers’ safety," Samsung "stopped sales, exchanges and production" of the troubled smartphone (see 1610110042), the company said. Samsung now expects to report a Q3 operating profit of 5.2 trillion Korean won ($4.6 billion), a 33 percent downgrade from the forecast of 7.8 trillion won ($7 billion) in Q3 operating profit from only a few days earlier (see 1610070038), the company said. The downgrade "reflects the impact" on Q3 earnings of the decision to scrap the Note7, Samsung said. It also converted the previously expected 5 percent rise in operating profit from Q3 a year earlier into an expected 30 percent decline, the company said. Samsung scheduled the release of Q3 results for Oct. 27.

Maryland first responders in Prince George’s County rolled out a smartphone app for alerting CPR-trained citizens of cardiac emergencies nearby. The county’s Fire/Emergency Medical Service Department will use the PulsePoint Respond app for iOS and Android, PulsePoint said in a news release Wednesday. The app, which can be used by anyone trained in CPR, also notifies users of the location of the closest automated external defibrillator. The department is the first in the National Capital Region to adopt the app, said Fire Chief Marc Bashoor. “It gives our residents and visitors the ability to know when a cardiac arrest is occurring close by, to respond quickly, and to attempt potentially lifesaving CPR while our paramedics travel to the scene.”

Sprint will give away mobile devices and free wireless internet for up to four years to 1 million low-income high-school students, the carrier said in a news release Tuesday. Sprint will team with nonprofits including EveryoneOn and My Brother’s Keeper Alliance. Students get a free smartphone, tablet, laptop or hot spot device with 3 GB of 4G LTE data monthly, Sprint said; speeds fall to 2G levels if a student exceeds the quota. "It’s a huge problem in America that we have 5 million households with children that lack internet connections," said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. "We are failing them.” A challenging aspect of "providing free wireless service for students is understanding the appropriate level of data usage to offer,” said Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition Executive Director John Windhausen. “The pilot program can be used to better understand data usage levels and needs, and may justify an increase in the 3 GB data cap as usage grows.”

Little to no progress has been made in making non-smartphone services available to individuals who are blind or visually impaired, but smartphone advanced communications services features and functions made significant advances in accessibility for wide ranges of individuals with disabilities, said the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau in the third FCC biennial 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) report to Congress, released Friday. It said more needs to be done to make equipment used with interconnected VoIP services more accessible. It said the accessibility of Internet browsers in mobile phones has improved for those who are blind or visually impaired, but there needs to be more progress especially on low-end to mid-range devices. The FCC said there are indications people with disabilities are increasingly included in product and service design, and new technologies have big potential to improve communications access by individuals with disabilities. Some communications technologies developed and deployed have barriers -- including the lack of interoperability of videoconferencing services and equipment and the lack of accessible alerting features for video calls and messages. The FCC said its Disability Rights Office during 2014 and 2015 received 45 requests for dispute assistance (RDA) alleging CVAA violations, with 26 involving accessibility and usability of equipment and 19 regarding accessibility and usability of services. The equipment-related complaints ranged from feature phones that lacked text-to-speech functionality or had keyboards hard to read or buttons too small to use, the agency said. Service-related complaints were predominantly about failure to provide instructions or billing in an accessible format or inaccessible contact information, customer service or directory assistance, it said. No consumers chose to escalate the RDAs to informal complaints for investigation, the FCC said.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission “is moving expeditiously” to investigate the incident aboard a Southwest Airlines flight Wednesday in which a phone that its owner said was a replacement Samsung Galaxy Note7 caught fire as the flight was boarding in Louisville, CPSC Chairman Elliot Kaye said in a statement. “Thankfully, reports indicate that all of the passengers were able to make it off the plane without harm,” said Kaye. After the incident, Southwest canceled flight 994 bound for Baltimore at 9:30 a.m., the airline said. CPSC staff “has already reached out to the FAA and Samsung to gather the facts about the incident,” said Kaye. “Agency staff will also reach out to the consumer who experienced a serious incident with his phone.” He repeated his call for consumers who still have the recalled Note7 to keep the phone powered down and turn it in for a replacement or refund. Sept. 15, CPSC cleared the replacement Note7s as safe, largely on the say-so of an engineer who works at CPSC’s National Product Testing and Evaluation Center in Rockville, Maryland (see 1609190059). Until Samsung is "able to retrieve the device" in question, it can't confirm the Southwest incident "involves the new Note7," a Samsung spokeswoman emailed us Thursday. Samsung is "working with the authorities" to recover the device and determine the cause of the incident, she said. "Once we have examined the device we will have more information to share." FAA representatives didn’t comment.

A Nevada-based electronics buyback company and its owner allegedly bilked consumers in a bait-and-switch scheme that promised high payouts for used smartphones, tablets and other devices, but delivered "far less," as little as 3 to 10 percent of the original quotes, the FTC said in a Tuesday news release. Commissioners voted 3-0 to issue the complaint against Laptop & Desktop Repair -- which also goes by cashforiphones.com and cashforlaptops.com, among other names -- and owner Vadim Olegovich Kruchinin. Georgia also charged the defendants. Last week, the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Georgia issued an order to the defendants to stop the alleged practice and to freeze its assets. The complaint alleged thousands of consumers complained to the FTC and other consumer protection agencies. A phone number for Laptop & Desktop Repair found through the Better Business Bureau website played a recording of business hours, but didn't provide a way to leave a message for comment.

The 911 National Emergency Address Database (NEAD), an independent entity established by CTIA, selected West's Safety Services to develop and operate the NEAD Platform, the association said Tuesday. “With a NEAD operator in place, the wireless industry remains on schedule to enhance indoor 911 location accuracy by harnessing commercial technologies,” CTIA said in a news release. Public safety groups hailed the development. The database “is one crucial element of a broad-based strategy aimed at making sure that every person who calls 911 can be located quickly and accurately,” said Brian Fontes, CEO of the National Emergency Number Association. "Getting the database online, with appropriate privacy and security controls, is a major milestone in our location accuracy agreement with the wireless carriers, and we look forward to the day when that milestone is reached.” The FCC approved rules last year aimed at improving indoor location accuracy for wireless calls to 911 (see 1501290066).