After 50 “glorious years,” Moore’s law is “running out of steam,” said a paper published Friday in The Economist. Moore’s law, which holds that computing power doubles every two years with no uptick in cost, has resulted in a modern smartphone that today packs more computing punch than a supercomputer did two decades ago, the paper said. “But after half a century of blistering progress, the end is now in sight.” Fifty years of Moore's law “have made computers cheap, powerful and tiny, but the exponential increase in computing power has been slowing for some time,” it said. “With transistors getting ever smaller, each successive shrinking is bringing fewer benefits while costs are rising dramatically.” The “twilight” of Moore’s law “will bring change, disorder and plenty of creative destruction,” it said. “An industry that used to rely on steady improvements in a handful of devices will splinter. Software firms may begin to dabble in hardware; hardware makers will have to tailor their offerings more closely to their customers’ increasingly diverse needs.”

The global market for inbuilt set-top boxes will grow at a 2 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), passing 179 million units by 2020, said a Technavio report Friday. Driving the moderate growth are government mandates in countries such as China and India where digitization of TV networks will fuel demand for set-tops that offer more channels, improved picture quality and DVR technology, it said. Hybrid versions combining satellite, cable and IPTV set-tops and offering over-the-top and pay-on-demand service are expected to grow at a 13 percent CAGR to 53.5 million units by 2020, said Technavio. To tap the growing set-top market, vendors are introducing services such as on-demand, push-VOD and specialized Internet services to increase average revenue per unit, said analyst Soumya Mutsuddi. Services include free-to-air and pay TV on the digital video broadcasting side and value-added services on the IP side, Mutsuddi said. The market is led by Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa countries. In the Americas, the market for satellite set-tops is “declining rapidly” as consumers switch to smart TVs and hybrid set-tops, said the researcher, while the market for Ultra HD set-tops will grow "substantially" during the period.

Identity theft was the second most reported complaint to the FTC in 2015, soaring by more than 47 percent from the prior year, the commission said in its annual summary of consumer complaints released Tuesday. The commission said the increase is attributable to a "massive jump" in tax ID theft complaints. ID theft complaints had been the top category for the previous 15 years before debt collection complaints eclipsed it last year, said the commission. Debt collection complaints rose largely because of submissions by a data contributor who collects such complaints via a mobile app, FTC said. “Steps like the recent upgrade to IdentityTheft.gov [see 1601280051] and our leadership of a nationwide initiative to combat unlawful debt collection practices are critical to our ongoing work to protect consumers from these harms," said Consumer Protection Bureau Chief Jessica Rich in a statement. The FTC's annual Consumer Sentinel Network data book contains complaints made directly by consumers to the commission, plus those received by other federal and state law enforcement agencies, national consumer protection groups and nongovernmental organizations.

Consumer confidence in the overall economy and in tech spending dipped in February as financial conditions worsened “across a number of metrics,” CTA said in a Tuesday report. Its index of consumer expectations, which measures consumer sentiment about the U.S. economy as a whole, and index of consumer technology expectations, which measures consumer expectations about tech spending, both fell about three points, it said. Consumer sentiments are turning negative, “despite a strong foundation for consumer spending coming from employment gains, wage growth and solid consumer wealth,” CTA said.

Consumer intentions to buy TV sets fell slightly in February from January, according to preliminary data in the Conference Board’s monthly survey. Of 5,000 homes Nielsen canvassed for the Conference Board through Feb. 11, 12.9 percent of consumers said they plan to buy a TV set in the next six months, down from 13.5 percent in January and 13.1 percent in December, and down sharply from 14.4 percent in February 2015, the Conference Board said. The Consumer Confidence Index, which increased moderately in January, declined in February because “consumers’ assessment of current conditions weakened, primarily due to a less favorable assessment of business conditions,” the Conference Board said in a Tuesday announcement. “Consumers’ short-term outlook grew more pessimistic, with consumers expressing greater apprehension about business conditions, their personal financial situation, and to a lesser degree, labor market prospects,” it said. “Continued turmoil in the financial markets may be rattling consumers, but their assessment of current conditions suggests the economy will continue to expand at a moderate pace in the near-term.”

Nearly half of U.S. consumers expecting a tax refund this year plan to save the money rather than spend it right away, said a National Retail Federation survey. Of the 7,108 consumers polled, 65.5 percent expect a refund. Americans plan to apply refunds to savings goals “and plan for bigger purchases in the future,” said NRF CEO Matthew Shay in a Thursday news release. In addition to savings, 35 percent of respondents said they plan to pay down debt and 22 percent said they'll use refunds for everyday expenses. Eleven percent said they'll book a vacation with their refund, while 9 percent plan to spend it on a major purchase such as a TV or car, said NRF. Millennials are "putting saving ahead of splurging as they look for ways to get ahead,” said Pam Goodfellow, consumer insights director of Prosper Consumer Insights, which did the study Feb. 2-9.

Brands will be forced to shift advertising from TV to mobile devices as linear TV “continues to fade” and brands look to engage further with consumers, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield wrote investors Tuesday. Although must-watch live TV events such as sports and awards shows will continue to make a strong case for live TV, “The concept of flipping through channels and watching linear, live TV will fade away for most consumers,” Greenfield said. Shifting TV ad dollars from TV networks to mobile will benefit platforms including Google, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, Greenfield said. Citing enthusiasm from CBS CEO Les Moonves last week predicting a “substantially higher” 2016 upfront ad-selling season, Greenfield said Moonves “appears to be in full-on denial as we believe it is quite clear that consumer TV viewing behavior has shifted dramatically over the past several years” toward binge viewing. The trend has become “increasingly mainstream over the past 18 months,” said Greenfield. The analyst cited a comment from CBS Chief Operating Officer Joe Ianniello on an earnings call last week, where Ianniello said the network’s All Access viewing by millennials was a “really good promotional vehicle for the catch-up,” before “they start watching back at the network.” TV network executives “keep hoping an improved TV Everywhere product can help solve their live, linear ratings problem,” but even if networks keep current-season stacking rights, “the experience of TV Everywhere remains poor, at best,” Greenfield said. “Forcing consumers to watch heavy, unskippable and often repetitive ad loads is only going to push consumers even faster toward binge viewing on ad-free platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu (in addition to HBO Now, Showtime and Starz).” Although the shift away from linear viewing to mobile won’t happen “overnight,” said Greenfield, “the trend is clear and likely to accelerate as more consumers are introduced to binging and more original series are premiered on binge-first platforms.” Greenfield recalled a comment last year by CBS Chief Research Officer David Poltrack, who said consumers were so obsessed with their mobile devices while watching TV, they were forgetting to fast-forward through commercials.

T-Mobile ranked highest for customer service performance among full-service wireless carriers, while Virgin Mobile topped the charts for customer service among noncontract providers, in J.D. Power's 2016 U.S. Wireless Customer Care Performance studies. Overall, wireless carrier customer satisfaction with self-service channels, such as online and automated response systems, "is higher than at any time, as a growing shift in demographics is impacting the service experience," J.D. Power said in a news release Thursday. According to the surveys, 49 percent of full-service customers have had a walk-in service contact in the past three months, with 43 percent having an automated response system (ARS) contact, followed by contact with a customer service representative, 42 percent had online contact and 24 percent had an ARS-only experience. ARS-only satisfaction increased 31 points -- on a 1,000-point scale -- from the previous survey, said J.D. Power. Overall customer service satisfaction among full-service wireless consumers is at 788 out of 1,000, an improvement of 7 points from the final 2015 survey, while noncontract customer satisfaction is at 738 points. The survey also found millennials are "relatively heavy users of customer service," and the first-contact resolution rate is lower among millennials across all four measured channels than among baby boomers.

Printed and flexible electronics may well be a $5.5 billion market opportunity by 2026, spearheaded in part by the projected growth of OLED technologies in the connected car and other commercial applications, IDTechEx said in a Monday report. In OLED, the industry is moving from glass to plastic substrates “following the trend towards flexible displays, with the two largest manufacturers, Samsung Display and LG Display, leading the charge and investing in new production lines,” the research firm said. “Aside from performance advantages that OLEDs bring to the table in terms of color gamut, contrast and power consumption, the benefits of flexible display integration in vehicles include lighter weight and robustness and in many cases, versatility in design and form factor.” In addition to flexible OLED panels, “transparent displays may also be adopted by the auto industry to transform the windows of vehicles into screens that display heads-up information for drivers,” it said. Inside the car, “the windscreen can display a host of useful contextual information such as vehicle speed, navigation instructions and location-based facts,” it said. “Outside of the car, the rear windshield can be utilized to communicate safety warnings and other notifications to fellow motorists such as the vehicle's speed and signals for when the car is braking.”

More than one in four Americans plans to buy a new TV in 2016, and of those, a quarter will make their purchases during the Super Bowl promotional frenzy leading up to the Feb. 7 game, the e-commerce site FatWallet said in a Tuesday report. FatWallet hired research firm TNS to canvass 1,000 adults online this month and found that those with Super Bowl TV-buying intentions topped the 18 percent who indicated they’ll wait until 2016's Black Friday to make a TV purchase, FatWallet said. Other survey findings: (1) Forty-six percent of consumers who buy TVs this year said they plan to buy their first Ultra HD set; (2) Nearly a third said they now stream a majority of their TV programming, up from 21 percent a year ago; (3) While 41 percent said they will seek out TVs with screens 55 inches or larger, 43 percent said they would be happy with screens smaller than 55 inches; (4) Price is the leading purchase consideration among 46 percent of those canvassed, including 60 percent for those under 30, while features are second (36 percent) and brand loyalty is third (18 percent); (5) Though in-store purchases remain the most popular means of buying a new TV, one in four plan to buy online or via a mobile device.