Growth in PC shipments in North America and Western Europe in Q3 was offset by a drop in emerging markets shipments, according to preliminary data from Gartner. Worldwide PC shipments reached 79.4 million units in Q3, slipping 0.5 percent from the year-ago quarter, it said. But positive results in mature markets -- including a 4.2 percent bump in the U.S. to 16.6 million units -- for the quarter could signal a “gradual recovery for the PC industry,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. Consumers’ attention is “slowly going back to PC purchases” following mainstream consumer adoption of tablets that has peaked at 40-50 percent, Kitagawa said. Weakness in emerging markets reflects “saturation in selected consumer segments where they can afford PCs,” she said. Hewlett-Packard continued as the No. 1 PC brand in the U.S. in Q3 on shipments of 4.6 million, representing 27.8 percent market share, Gartner said. Dell came in second at 3.8 million shipments for 24.1 percent share followed by Apple at 2.4 million shipments and 14.3 percent share. Lenovo’s share slipped from 10.6 percent in Q3 2013 to 10.5 percent in Q3 2014 while shipments rose 3.2 percent to 1.7 million units, Gartner said. Toshiba lost a percentage point of market share to 6.1 percent as shipments declined nearly 10 percent in the quarter, Gartner said. Back-to-school season in the U.S. “was not exceptional,” Kitagawa said, but holiday season sales should be buoyed by “affordable touch-based laptops, price drops of thin and light laptops, and 2-in-1 hybrid laptops.” In emerging markets, consumers who don’t have PCs will likely buy low-priced tablets, resulting in slower growth in PC shipments, Kitagawa said. For the first time, Gartner said, the total of the top five PC vendors’ market share reached two-thirds of worldwide PC shipments, with all five showing stronger growth than the industry average. At No. 1, Lenovo grew its worldwide share to 19.8 percent in Q3 from 17.7 percent in the year-ago quarter on shipments of 15.7 million units. HP followed with shipments of 14.2 million, representing 17.9 percent market share and Dell at 10.2 million units with share of 12.8 percent, Gartner said. Acer shipped 6.8 million PCs in Q3 representing 8.6 percent market share, while Asus came in with 7.3 percent share on shipments of 5.8 million units, it said. Companies making up the “other” category posted shipments of 27 million for 33.6 percent share, it said.

As retailers begin the crucial fourth quarter, several pushed cart-priced TVs on their websites Thursday. Seven weeks ahead of Black Friday, top-end HDTV models are being squeezed by competitively priced 4K Ultra HD TV models, we found. At h.h. gregg, even the LG 55UB8500 4K Ultra HD TV found its way into the bargain bin with a disclaimer on the website: “When our price is lower than the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, hhgregg cannot show you the price until the item is in your cart.” Cart price for the LG 55-inch 55UB850 4K TV was shown as $1,698 compared with $1,799 at Best Buy and $2,299 on LG’s website. Also at h.h. gregg, consumers had to place the Samsung UN65H6350 in their virtual shopping cart before the sale price of $1,588 appeared. Best Buy also had cart pricing for the UN65H6350 at a $1,596 price. A Toshiba 50-inch HDTV, model 50L1400U, was cart-priced at h.h. gregg for $498, a $151 discount, and was selling for $1 more at Best Buy without cart pricing, we found. A cart-priced Sharp 60-inch LC60UQ17U was selling at h.h. gregg Thursday for $1,799, a $1,200 discount, although that was the same price Sharp showed on its site. At Walmart Thursday, Vizio’s recently launched 50-inch P502ui-B1E retained its $998 price, while a Seiki 39-inch TV took entry-level pricing for 4K TV to $339.

High-resolution audio is “hitting the market at the right time," but it has hurdles to overcome, said DisplaySearch analyst Ben Arnold in a blog post Thursday. Sony is the “lone official hardware supporter” of high-res audio, which is “still in search of broad backing,” Arnold said. For awareness of high-res audio to gain traction, more audio companies need to help promote the feature and build awareness beyond the audio enthusiast base, he said. According to an NPD headphone study, 58 percent of premium headphone buyers said sound quality is an important purchase motivator, and 89 percent of wireless speaker owners said sound quality was the leading motivator in their purchase decision, with market numbers indicating some consumers are paying more in support of those trends. Wireless speakers priced above $150 have shown 103 percent sales growth over past year, and soundbars above $600 grew in sales by 44 percent, Arnold said, showing a “growing market for premium, better sounding audio products.” While legacy AV receiver sales as a whole have declined 12 percent in the past year, sales of those above $1,000 grew by 4 percent, he said. Another limiting factor for high-res audio is scarcity of content, Arnold said, citing HD Tracks and iTrax as the most widely known distributors of lossless digital music downloads. But popular streaming services including Pandora and Spotify and marketplaces including iTunes and Google Play Music don’t currently offer “true hi-res” music files or streaming options, Arnold noted. “If the true test is hearing the difference between standard MP3 files and lossless hi-res music, consumers have few places to listen,” he said. While hardware specifications and bitrate statistics may move some consumers to step up to higher quality audio, the majority of consumers need to listen to the difference before they can be swayed, Arnold said. “This requires a broader alliance of industry partners with manufacturers, retailers, and content providers all playing a role,” he said. Music listeners have indicated they want the best quality audio experience possible, he said, “but without the opportunity to hear for themselves, the days of good enough quality are here to stay.”

The MIPI Alliance will use the AES convention Saturday in Los Angeles to present a technical paper on MIPI SoundWire, a new audio interface spec for amplifiers, mics and audio codecs used in smartphones, tablets, mobile PCs and other devices, the group said Thursday (http://bit.ly/10WrwmP). “Companies can apply the specification as needed to best fit their particular systems integration requirements.” It said more than 25 companies “from across the audio technology ecosystem” took part in developing MIPI SoundWire. Ratification of the spec is expected to be done by year-end, but products based on it “are already in development and IP, silicon components and test tools based on the specification are expected to become commercially available also by year-end 2014,” it said. MIPI SoundWire is a hardware interface and transport protocol that companies can apply “to add intelligence to audio peripherals, increase the number of peripherals attached to a link and optimize their implementations without compromising product cost, pin count, power consumption, software complexity, or key audio metrics,” it said. “The boundaries between mobile phones, tablets and PCs are converging but until now, standardized audio interfaces have been specific to the individual market segments,” it said. “The fragmentation has made it very challenging for firms to scale their product designs for use across segments. MIPI SoundWire was developed to provide a common interface to overcome this challenge.”

Android Wear smartphone owners will soon be able to control music from the iHeartRadio streaming app from their wrists, iHeartMedia said Thursday. Users who sync an Android Wear smartphone -- including the Samsung Gear Live, Moto 360 and LG G Watch -- with a compatible Android phone will be able to access the iHeartRadio app via voice activation, iHeartMedia said. Features that will be available through Android Wear integration, effective Oct. 15, include voice search, access to favorites, customized recommendations and a thumbs up/thumbs down feature, the company said. IHeartRadio also has announced integrations with Amazon’s Fire Phone, Amazon’s Fire TV, Android Auto, Apple’s CarPlay, Chromecast, Qualcomm’s AllPlay, Samsung’s Gear 2 Smartwatch and auto partnerships with AT&T Drive, General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia, Subaru and Volvo, iHeartMedia said.

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Failing to address the overreach of U.S. government surveillance will create long-lasting damage for the digital economy, said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and tech executives from Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Facebook and Microsoft during a Wednesday discussion at Palo Alto High School, where Wyden went to high school in Palo Alto, California. “The cost,” said Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, “is huge in terms of knowledge, discovery, science, growth, jobs.” Countries around the world will start implementing data localization requirements, said Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith. In the last few months alone, 20 governments have either proposed or discussed such laws, said Dropbox General Counsel Ramsey Homsany. Cloud storage services like Dropbox rely on the ability to store data anywhere, the industry officials said. Requirements to keep individuals’ data stored locally would kill cloud-based storage, they said. In turn, the Internet slows down, becomes less personalized and costs are driven up as companies are required to put data centers in each country, said Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch. Data localization also is a threat to civil liberties, he said. Insisting on local data storage could “result in quite possibly more access by state sponsored surveillance,” he said. Governments have been able to sell data localization as a consumer protection measure, Schmidt said, when in fact localization erodes “the architecture that all these companies and all the startups really need to have.” Wyden touted his industry-supported Digital Trade Act (S-1788), which would prevent cross-border data flow restrictions and prohibit localization requirements, as a first step toward ensuring the continued health of the digital economy. But it’s no fix for the “reckless broad surveillance,” which “hampers our ability” to convince countries to accept the free flow of data, Wyden said.

Crestron expanded its operating space in Dubai, opening a new office with a customer experience center and two training classrooms to meet growing demand for systems and skilled integrators in the region, it said Wednesday. The company will keep its regional base that houses sales, marketing, customer service and support in the heart of the city, it said. Crestron has added certification courses for 4K Ultra HD TV training, it said.

After shrinking since 2012, global PC sales are expected to rise 5 percent in 2015 on replacement sales, said a report by Strategy Analytics (http://bit.ly/1sfD1Ah). Sales for this year are projected to fall 4 percent, it said. PCs remain “essential computing devices” despite the rise of tablets, Strategy Analytics said. Frequent tablet usage has grown by 22 percentage points from 2011 to Q4 2013, to 32 percent of all households, while frequent mobile PC usage has remained flat during the period, it said. Some 63 percent of all households said they frequently used mobile PCs, while frequent usage of all PCs, not including tablets, slipped by 3 percent but remained above the 90 percent level, it said. “Multiple PC ownership is falling as tablet sales supplant replacement demand for secondary PCs mainly used for casual tasks,” said Eric Smith, analyst. But PCs will remain essential devices as households replace primary PCs used for productivity tasks including spreadsheets, video editing and personal banking, he said. The tablet experience is extending to the PC through affordable 2-in-1 convertible PCs and new operating systems that “blend traditional PC and tablet user experiences,” said David Watkins, analyst.

Protag launched a tracking device called the Duet that allows users to keep track of their belongings using Bluetooth low energy. Users download the Protag app from the Google Play or Apple stores, create an account, pair the Duet with a smartphone and attach the Duet to an item such as a wallet, keys or purse, the company said Wednesday. Once the Duet is separated from the paired phone by more than 33 feet, its alarm goes off and an alert is sent to the phone, notifying the user that the belonging was left behind, the company said. The Protag app keeps track of up to 10 Duet-tagged items. The app remembers the last known GPS location for each Duet and enables users to view the location on a map, designate names for each Duet, associate a particular ring to each device and use radar for items that are harder to locate up to 100 feet away, the company said. Radar lets users know, within a 30-meter range, if they're getting nearer or farther from the Duet they are looking for, it said. Users can also locate a paired smartphone by pressing a button on a Duet, it said. Protag is taking pre-orders for the Duet, which will begin shipping at the end of October. Devices sell for $29.99 each; in two-packs for $56.99; four-packs for $112.99; and six-packs for $169.99, the company said.