The FTC is hiring technologists to staff its newly formed Office of Technology Research and Investigation (OTRI), which was created to “expand the FTC’s capacity to protect consumers in an age of rapid technological innovation,” wrote FTC Chief Technologist Ashkan Soltani in a blog post Monday. In its hundred years, the commission has protected consumers as new technologies, from movies and radio to smartphones and connected cars, emerged, Soltani said. “When smart phones began to become ubiquitous, the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection created a Mobile Technology Unit” (MTU) to highlight “consumer protection challenges posed by mobile technologies,” and developed tools and techniques to protect consumers, Soltani said. The OTRI is the successor to the MTU and will tackle "an even broader array of investigative research on technology issues involving all facets of the FTC’s consumer protection mission, including privacy, data security, connected cars, smart homes, algorithmic transparency, emerging payment methods, big data, and the Internet of Things,” he said. New positions the FTC announced include a technology policy research fellowship, research coordinator and technology research internship program, Soltani said. The FTC’s tech blog, traditionally reserved for posts from the agency’s chief technologist, soon will expand to allow posts from “invited FTC staff, including members of OTRI,” who will guest blog about technical research findings and technology-related issues affecting consumers, he said.

Smartphone shipments globally will increase at an 8.5 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2019, “dwarfing” that of other “smart connected device” (SCD) shipments like tablets (including 2-in-1s), laptops and desktop PCs, IDC said Friday in its device tracker. IDC sees smartphone shipments climbing to 1.96 billion units in 2019, from 1.3 billion in 2014. Tablets and 2-in-1s will have a CAGR of 3.2 percent through 2019, though laptops will decline 0.4 percent and desktops 2 percent, it said. “As recently as 2010, PCs still made up the lion's share of the total SCD device market,” with desktops and notebooks combined accounting for 52.5 percent of shipments versus 44.7 percent for smartphones and 2.8 percent for tablets, IDC said. By 2014, smartphones had grown to 73.4 percent of total shipments, while PCs had slipped to 16.8 percent and tablets had increased to 12.5 percent, it said. By 2019, IDC expects the distribution to be 77.8 percent smartphones, 11.6 percent PCs, and 10.7 percent tablets, it said. Though smartphone growth continues “at an astounding pace,” not all smartphone growth “will be equal,” IDC said. In the years to come, smartphones’ viability will rest on emerging markets, sub-$100 price points, and phablets, it said. Last year, 73 percent of smartphones were shipped to emerging markets, 21 percent were priced below $100, and 12 percent had screen sizes between 5.5 and 7 inches, it said. By 2019, IDC sees four in every five smartphones being shipped to emerging markets, while 35 percent will be priced below $100, and 32 percent will have 5.5-7-inch screen sizes, it said. “So far the market has very much focused on premium models and brands, but emerging market consumers are looking for greater value from a single device."

AT&T will carry the Samsung Galaxy S 5 mini in its retail stores and online beginning March 20, the carrier said Monday. The Galaxy S 5 mini has a 4.5-inch 720 x 1280 display and an 8-megapixel rear camera. AT&T customers can buy the mini in charcoal black for $0 down on an AT&T Next plan at $14.30 per month for 24 months, $17.88 per month for 18 months or $21.48 per month for 12 months, AT&T said. Users can also buy the phone for $99 with a two-year contract or for $428 with no contract, the carrier said.

CTIA filed at the FCC an opinion by the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks on potential health effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields, which said there are no health risks from cellphone use. “Overall,” epidemiological studies on radiofrequency and electromagnetic fields exposure from mobile phones “do not show an increased risk of brain tumours,” the report said. “They do not indicate an increased risk for other cancers of the head and neck region.” There is “a lack of evidence” that cellphones affect cognitive functions in humans, said the report, filed March 13 in docket 13-84. “While effects have been found in individual studies, these have typically been observed only in a small number of endpoints, with little consistency between studies.”

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) “plans to sign” HB-389, which would ban drivers in the state from writing, sending or reading messages on a mobile device while behind the wheel, a spokeswoman said Tuesday. The state Senate voted 49-3 Monday to approve the bill, which would institute a $25 fine for offenses committed through July 1, 2016. The fine would rise to $100 per offense after that date. The state has a ban on texting for drivers under the age of 18 but is otherwise one of six states that don't have blanket bans on the practice.

In Q4 2014, 43.6 percent of U.S. consumers with a smartphone owned an Apple iPhone, according to a survey by Nielsen. Samsung followed with 31 percent, LG at 7.6 percent, Motorola at 5.8 percent and HTC at 3.9 percent, all from the Android community. Windows Phone-based Nokia phones had 2.2 percent, and BlackBerry smartphones were 1.2 percent of the U.S. smartphone population, said Nielsen. Android was the leading operating system among U.S. smartphone owners, at 49.5 percent of users, it said. Sixteen percent of smartphone owners said they had acquired their handset within the past three months, bringing smartphone penetration to 77 percent of mobile phone owners in the U.S., said Nielsen. Among those who had recently acquired a phone, 91 percent chose a smartphone, compared with 82 percent in the year-ago quarter. Overall, smartphone penetration grew 8 percentage points over Q4 2013, it said. Nielsen’s Mobile Insights is a monthly survey of 30,000-plus mobile subscribers aged 13-plus in the U.S.

Smartphone ownership in the U.S. increased from 8 percent in 2005 to more than 80 percent in 2014, but consumers continue to use the same eight apps on their mobile devices, said smartphone and tablet research from market researcher Parks Associates. Social networking apps were the most commonly used, followed by gaming and music apps. “The average app use among smartphone users has held relatively constant," said Harry Wange, Parks director-health and mobile product research. "This leaves an increasingly wide variety of apps competing for the finite attention span of the consumer." A similar trend was discovered with tablets. Despite use increasing from about 30 percent in 2012 to 60 percent in 2014, consumers continue to use the same seven apps on their tablets, it said.

An IEEE “conformity assessment steering committee” started work on an “open, industry-wide effort” to develop and deliver a standardized, “metrics-based” rating system for smartphone camera image quality, the group said Monday. The steering committee wants to engage carriers, camera designers and handset makers in creating a ratings system that will be “easily understandable for consumers,” it said. Developing a “standardized approach” to testing and certifying smartphone cameras “will provide great value to players throughout the camera phone supply chain, as well as consumers,” it said. Competitive smartphone models may have identical megapixel specs, but they’re capable of producing “varying image quality, which may cause dissatisfaction and confusion for consumers,” it said. “There is a need in the marketplace for a clear, concise and comprehensive definition of image quality that consumers of current and future mobile imaging devices worldwide could use in comparing products. We envision a rating system that would eliminate ambiguity about the image quality to expect from a given device and help consumers make better-educated buying decisions for their specific needs.”

Sprint will release the LG G Pad F 7.0 tablet March 13 and is offering several bundled promotions that give the tablet to customers who commit to LG smartphone contracts. New and existing Sprint customers with an active smartphone account can get the G Pad F for free in select retail channels with a new two-year service agreement, Sprint said. For $90 per month for 24 months and no money down, customers can lease the G3 smartphone with unlimited data, talk and text while on the Sprint network and get a gigabyte of data on the G Pad, the carrier said. Customers can buy the LG Flex2 smartphone for $95 per month for 24 months and $0 down for unlimited data, talk and text and get a gigabyte of data per month on the tablet. The tablet can also be purchased separately for $0 down, no finance fees and 24 $10 monthly payments, Sprint said. The 7-inch tablet has a WXGA IPS display and is built on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 1.2GHZ quad-core processor.

SIM card vendor Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) jumped Tuesday to address a widely circulated article from The Intercept last week reporting that in 2010 and 2011, American and British spies “hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world” -- G&D competitor Gemalto -- “stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe.” That hack, which the report said was not limited to Gemalto (see 1502200039), “gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.” Gemalto issued a statement Monday saying it was studying the matter and would reveal the results of its investigation in a news conference Wednesday. In its news release Tuesday, G&D, which supplies SIM cards to more than 350 mobile network operators worldwide, said it has played an “important role” in the development of SIM card security standards for two decades. “The SIM card is so secure that in the case revealed recently, even intelligence services preferred to steal the key rather than attack the SIM card,” G&D said. The secure authentication of the mobile phone user on the mobile network is the main function of the SIM card, it said, saying G&D employs “the highest security procedures and processes.” The company “is taking the targeted attacks by intelligence services which were reported in the last few days very seriously, however,” it said. “Until now G&D has no knowledge that SIM card keys were stolen,” Stefan Auerbach, G&D’s head-mobile security business unit, said. “Immediately after the attacks were brought to light we did, however, introduce additional measures to review the established security processes together with our customers.”