As "pitchers and catchers report" day Wednesday heralded the beginning of Major League Baseball’s spring training season, software company UP17 used the occasion to launch a mobile app that lets users interact with former MLB pros for instruction. With the premium UP17 mobile app, users can shoot and submit videos of their hitting or pitching techniques to the UP17 platform. A UP17 ProCoach reviews the video and provides an “in-depth lesson package” with performance breakdowns, notes and other takeaways, it said. Coaches also provide drills to help with development, and players receive a certificate to show they’ve been coached by a pro, said the company. UP17 worked with the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association to assemble the coaching team, said company spokesman and ex-Major Leaguer Dale Murphy. Coaches include John Doherty, John Frascatore, Toby Hall, Nick Green, Paul Lo Duca, Denny Hocking, Desi Relaford, Joe Oliver, Tanyon Sturtze, Matt Wise, Anthony Telford and Brian Tollberg. The app is free from Apple’s App Store for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, but lessons are not. Lesson prices are $75 each, $65 when purchased in bundles of six, said the company.

LG announced the Stylus 2, the follow-up to the Stylus G4 smartphone, before its debut at Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona. The 5.7-inch Stylus 2, with an HD in-cell touch screen, comes with a thinner "nanocoated" pen tip with the feel of a standard pen to provide more accuracy for note-taking and drawing, said the company. Its Calligraphy Pen font is designed to mimic the experience of writing with a fountain pen, and a Pen Keeper feature is designed to prevent the pen from being misplaced by alerting users through a popup message if the phone is detected as being in motion when the stylus bay is empty, said the company. Pricing, not disclosed, will target the mid-tier of the smartphone market, it said. Dimensions of the Stylus 2 are 6.1 x 3.1 x .29 inches, with U.S. availability slated for later in 2016.

A third of iPhone owners and 30 percent of Samsung smartphone owners use a model that’s more than two years old, with 45 percent of all U.S. broadband homes waiting two years to upgrade their smartphones, a Parks Associates report said Wednesday. Mobile operators are “pulling out all the tricks to encourage phone upgrades," as the two-year contract is fading from mobile strategies, analyst Harry Wang said. U.S. carriers began eliminating two-year contracts in 2012 and by end of Q3 2015, half of mobile users were on a contract, down from 70 percent at the end of 2011, Parks said. Other findings: (1) More than 70 percent of smartphone users watch short video clips, and 40 percent long ones, it said. (2) Almost 40 percent of users engage the voice recognition function, and half of iPhone users have used Siri, it said. (3) Thirty-six percent of smartphone owners use Wi-Fi calling, 35 percent stream music from the phone to speakers, 26 percent use a payment app for purchases at a retail location, and 24 percent stream content from a phone to a second screen, it said.

House legislation that would preclude states and localities from banning encryption on smartphones sold within their borders was introduced Wednesday by Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, and others who cited the need for such a bill to pre-empt actions proposed by state legislators in California and New York. “A patchwork of 50 different encryption standards is a recipe for disaster that would create new security vulnerabilities, threaten individual privacy and undermine the competitiveness of American innovators,” said Lieu in a news release. “It is bad for law enforcement, bad for technology users, and bad for American technology companies. National issues require national responses." Farenthold said "the California and New York proposals do not solve the problem. We need to keep free market and trade between the several states robust, not promote a false sense of security and require things like backdoors and golden keys that can be exploited by hackers.” They said the Ensuring National Constitutional Rights for Your Private Telecommunications (Encrypt) Act has been endorsed by several industry groups including the Internet Association and the Information Technology Industry Council. TechFreedom President Berin Szoka said in a news release that encryption "should absolutely be a federal issue. Congress should, indeed, be careful about preempting state laws, but the Internet is an inherently interstate medium. There’s just no reason that states or localities should have any role in regulating Internet services or devices.” Encryption has become a heated issue, especially for federal law enforcement officials like FBI Director James Comey, who has repeatedly said secure communications and data make it harder for agencies to investigate terrorism and criminal cases (see 1512100032).

A strong holiday quarter boosted worldwide smartphone shipments to new record highs, “thanks to robust product offerings at numerous price points in both mature and emerging markets,” IDC said Wednesday in a quarterly smartphone tracker report. That was in sharp contrast to an early December “forecast update” in which IDC said 2015 would be the first full year of only single-digit percentage worldwide smartphone sales growth due to the slowdown in consumer demand in most Asian markets, Latin America and Western Europe (see 1512030051). Now, IDC estimates worldwide smartphone makers shipped a total of 1.4 billion units for the full year, “marking the highest year of shipments on record,” up 10.1 percent from the 1.3 billion units shipped in 2014, the research firm said. “Usually the conversation in the smartphone market revolves around Samsung and Apple, but Huawei's strong showing for both the quarter and the year speak to how much it has grown as an international brand," IDC said. "While there is a lot of uncertainty around the economic slowdown in China, Huawei is one of the few brands from China that has successfully diversified worldwide, with almost half of its shipments going outside of China.” For 2015, IDC estimates Samsung finished with the top global share at 22.7 percent, down from its 24.4 percent share in 2014. Apple held onto the second position at 16.2 percent, up from its 14.8 percent share in 2014, IDC said. But No. 3 Huawei’s share rose to 7.4 percent from 5.7 percent on its 44.3 percent rise in unit shipments from 2014, IDC said. By comparison, shipments at Samsung and Apple increased only 2.1 percent and 20.2 percent, respectively, it said.

Q1 revenue in Qualcomm’s QTL technology licensing business was higher than expected “and would have been even higher if not for a contract dispute with LG” that prompted QTL to defer revenue of more than $100 million for the quarter, Qualcomm President Derek Aberle said Wednesday on an earnings call. “Although LG continues to report and pay, we're not recognizing revenue while the arbitration regarding the dispute proceeds,” Aberle said. “We believe LG's claims are without merit. The deferral of this revenue has the effect of depressing the implied royalty rate as you would calculate it, as their shipments are included in total reported device sales without the corresponding revenue. Assuming we conclude this matter successfully, as we have done with others in the past, we would expect to recognize the deferred revenues at that time.” LG representatives didn’t comment Thursday.

Israel-based Just in Case is releasing its "flagship" product, a “slim, elegantly designed” case for the iPhone that records calls and in-person conversations, it said Tuesday. The cases comes in red, blue, yellow, white and black and are being offered at an early bird price of $29.99, with release likely in May, Just in Case said. “Ever been on a phone call and wished you could press ‘record’ to save that conversation forever?” the company said in a news release. “A Phone call with your sick relative re-telling a beloved story, a really long conference call when you are under-caffeinated, or even a chat with a shady apartment manager who keeps denying you've spoken about a leak.”

The Asus ZenFone Zoom, with a 3x optical zoom Hoya lens, launched for pre-order at $399 through B&H Photo Wednesday. The Android smartphone combines Asus PixelMaster technology and a 10-element Hoya lens that allows macro zoom shots as close as two inches, said Asus. The companies jointly developed the phone's aspheric, molded-glass lens system with a technique they call “D-cut” that’s paired with dual high-precision stepper motors arranged to maximize incoming light and ensure a high-quality image, Asus said. A manual mode enables photographers to adjust exposure, ISO, white balance, and other options, while the phone’s 13-megapixel Panasonic SmartFSI sensor includes optical image stabilization. ZenFone, powered by an Intel quad-core Atom Z3580 SoC (system on chip), has a five-inch screen protected by Gorilla Glass. Availability is early February.

One hundred ninety-five experts, companies and organizations are protesting laws and legislation that would weaken strong encryption, in a letter that will be delivered to world leaders in China, India, the U.K., U.S. and other nations. “The internet belongs to the world’s people, not its governments," said Access Now Executive Director Brett Solomon Monday in a news release. "We refuse to let this precious resource become nationalized and broken by any nation. This letter seeks to unify the voices of global internet users by demanding the protection of tools necessary to the expression of our human rights.” Access Now, which organized the letter, said several countries, including the U.S. (see 1511240023), want companies to provide governments with a back door to encrypted files. David Kaye, U.N. special rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression, security expert Bruce Schneier and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic Parliament, among others, signed the letter. Among organizations and companies, ACLU, Computer & Communications Industry Association, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet Association and TechFreedom signed it.

Emmis Communications, which developed NextRadio (see 1408050056), sees 2016 as a “breakthrough year” for the FM-reception smartphone app, said CEO Jeff Smulyan on an earnings call. Having scored big NextRadio wins in 2015 with wireless carriers AT&T, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular, “discussions with others both on the handset business and carriers are ongoing and very encouraging,” Smulyan said. Emmis also is having NextRadio talks in Australia, Canada, “all over” Latin America and Germany, and thinks NextRadio is an idea whose “time has come,” he said. Emmis thinks about 100 million smartphones globally will have “the ability to get NextRadio” by mid-2017, Smulyan said Thursday. “Remember with NextRadio, we have to do this one phone at a time,” he said. “We have to reach an agreement with the carrier,” then with the handset maker, to activate the FM chip that’s built into virtually all new smartphones, he said. “So it’s not as simple as just saying, OK, it is there, and 300 million phones get it.” But the “incredible support” NextRadio is getting “gives us hope against the background of an industry that’s frankly been challenged for the last number of years with flat to down growth,” he said of the radio business. At CES, NextRadio had “a pretty significant presence,” including staging an event with Blu, the largest supplier of unlocked phones for sale, through Amazon, Best Buy, Target and Walmart, he said. Emmis also demonstrated at CES a NextRadio automotive app with Ford, developed at the automaker’s “request,” and “we are really very excited about that,” he said. Verizon on the carrier side and Apple on the handset side remain the hardest nuts for NextRadio to crack (see 1504120004), he said, but “we are very encouraged by the conversations we are having.”