Home furnishings retailer Ikea is showing a line of wireless charging furniture at Mobile World Congress. It embeds Qi technology and is due in stores in April. The Qi-powered bedside tables, lamps and desks will be available in stores in Europe and North America, with a global rollout to follow, said Ikea. The furniture shows consumers the “beauty and simplicity of wireless charging," said Menno Treffers, chairman of the Wireless Power Consortium, which backs the Qi standard. According to Bjorn Block, Ikea range manager-lighting and wireless charging, “Mobile phones are vital parts to people's lives at home and their desire to stay connected, and Qi addresses an unmet need to keep devices powered.” Qi, the dominant wireless charging technology, is available in 3,000 hotels, restaurants, airports and public locations worldwide, said the WPC. More than 80 Qi-enabled smartphones, 15 models of Qi-enabled cars and “countless” Qi mobile accessories are in the market, said WPC.
Connected TVs moved past Blu-ray players on the list of most-used TV app platforms, to become the third most prominently owned device that delivers apps to TVs in the U.S., said the NPD Group. In Q4, 22 million connected TVs were installed and accessing the Internet in the U.S., said NPD, up from 13 million in the year-ago quarter, while Internet-connected Blu-ray Disc players numbered 20 million. By 2017, 47 million connected TVs in 30 million U.S. Internet homes will be delivering content through apps, said NPD, saying usage trends led the TV to become a more prominent connected device ahead of forecast. Availability of apps from top TV networks will be key to the future success of connected TV as HBO and Showtime join CBS in becoming available to consumers this year without the need for a cable or satellite pay-TV subscription, said analyst John Buffone. The most-used TV app platforms are video game consoles, followed by streaming media players, said NPD.
Charter Communications renamed its business services division Spectrum Business, Charter said in a news release Monday. Along with giving that part of the division a new name, Charter invested in improving its business broadband offerings, including doubling speeds, the release said. “Rebranding as Spectrum Business is a natural evolution for our company as we have elevated our focus on serving large customers with sophisticated communications needs,” said Executive Vice President Don Detampel.
The LTE-U Forum released its first report evaluating LTE unlicensed, showing how it can coexist with Wi-Fi and other technologies that share unlicensed spectrum, said a Verizon news release Monday. LTE-U extends LTE and LTE Advanced, so mobile operators can offload data traffic onto unlicensed frequencies more efficiently and effectively. “Unlicensed spectrum is designed to promote innovation and choices for consumers,” said Ed Chan, Verizon senior vice president-network technology and planning.
Domino's customers can now place and track pizza orders on a Pebble or Android Wear smart watch, the chain said Monday. To use the new ordering feature, users must have a Domino's app installed on their smart watch, along with a “Pizza Profile” with a saved “Easy Order” or recent order, the chain said. "Pairing Domino's with smart watch technology couldn't be more of a natural fit," said Kevin Vasconi, Domino's chief information officer. Domino’s spokeswoman Jenny Fouracre declined comment when we asked whether her company also plans to offer the pizza-ordering function on the Apple Watch when it becomes available in April. “To date our practice has been not to comment about anything forward looking,” she emailed Monday.
Toshiba America Electronic Components will start sampling two new Internet of Things application processors this month, the TZ1011MBG and TZ1031MBG, to help developers “meet the fast-growing demand for wearable IoT devices such as activity monitors, smart watches, bracelets and glasses,” it said Monday. The new application processors further expand sensing functionality to two IoT devices Toshiba launched last year, adding a 3-axis gyroscope to the TZ1031MBG and a 3-axis gyroscope and 3-axis magnetometer to the TZ1011MBG, the company said. “There has been an explosion of interest in services that monitor duration and level of physical activity, help improve nutrition and help prevent diseases related to lifestyle, all of which drives demand for wearable devices," it said. The new application processors "make it possible to realize wearable devices” without the need for any other components, “enabling a smaller form factor and, in turn, smaller, lighter wearables," it said.
The first-generation $399 Puls smart watch, available on a limited basis from the Will.i.am startup, i.am+, proves “the level of engineering capability and competence we can bring” to the wearables market, “including the whole back-end system that goes with it,” Phil Molyneux, the startup’s new president-chief operating officer, told us Friday. There’s “a fairly significant infrastructure” behind the Puls, including the proprietary, Android-derived operating system called AneedA that i.am+ developed with Nuance Communications, Molyneux said. “If we look into the future and the road map possibilities, it gives us multiple directions that we could branch out in and add onto that platform, using our proprietary operating system and user interface, and the apps that are already built into the current-generation product,” the former Sony Electronics president said. “We have a road map forward that I’m working on. ... I haven’t fixed with the team exactly where do we go, first, second or third step. So that’s work in process.” Molyneux wants to take “a little bit more time,” and perform “a little bit more due diligence, to make sure we’re taking the right strategic steps,” he said. In studying the markets and “geographies we should approach” with its forthcoming generations of wearable electronics, the U.S. and U.K. are a lock, but beyond that is open territory, Molyneux said. “We have a relationship with AT&T,” he said. “We partnered with them on the first-generation product. And of course, we have a relationship with O2 in the U.K.” In evaluating future market opportunities, “there are some mighty big populist [sic] countries in this world and some rapidly emerging economies and wealth levels that we have to take a look at,” Molyneux said. The company won’t hesitate to leverage the star power of its CEO, Will.i.am, where the opportunities are right, he said. Asked whether the company will aim to be a ubiquitous or niche brand of wearables within a year, Molyneux answered: “We’re going to be smart and steady. We’re a startup. We need to look at how we fund the company and manage the growth.” In the next 12 months, Molyneux anticipates taking “careful, meaningful steps, and as we scale the organization and operation as well as our supply base and reach, we can talk further about where do we go and which countries we go,” he said. “So this is not necessarily a race. This is smart, careful building for the long term.” In the past week, Molyneux hired Ro Peschken as chief financial officer, he said. She’s his former senior vice president-corporate controller at Sony Electronics in San Diego. Molyneux has “lined up” another key executive who’s “very experienced in supply-chain operations, from components, right the way through to the customer, and everything in between,” he said. Besides innovating and bringing to market differentiated forms of wearables, Molyneux wants to put his engineering team to work at devising “mechanisms” for boosting battery life of mobile devices, he said. “If we look at technology evolution over the past 10 years or so, batteries in general, energy in general, for mobile devices has been a struggle,” he said. “If you go to any airport, and have a look around where everybody’s standing, they’re all plugged into the power outlets at the airport. So I would say it’s an industry challenge to resolve. There are ways around it.”
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.”
Cox Media and TubeMogul are partnering to create a cross-device video advertising initiative to give marketers a new way to reach local and regional consumers, a news release from Cox Media said Friday. The partnership offers programmatic digital video ad inventory alongside local TV inventory across many screens including mobile, tablets and on traditional TV sets. The service is available to marketers in all of Cox’s designated market areas.
Following an announcement earlier last week that CinemaNow would stream content in DTS-HD (see 1502240057), DTS said Friday that M-Go will be the first streaming service to offer DTS Headphone:X as part of a rollout of DTS-HD. DTS didn’t give a timetable for implementation of Headphone:X surround sound, saying only that the Headphone:X experience will be available in “future applications” via M-Go on “any set of headphones.” While DTS-HD via CinemaNow is limited currently to Samsung TVs and Xbox One consoles -- along with Blu-ray players, AV receivers and soundbars with DTS-HD decoders -- DTS-HD programming from M-Go will launch on a “wide variety of connected devices, including smart TVs, consoles, set top boxes, and Android and iOS mobile devices” and “is not limited to just Samsung and Xbox One,” a DTS spokesman told us. Headphone:X, which provides a surround sound experience for headphone users, is delivered by the DTS-HD stream, he said. DTS Headphone:X is shipping on Qualcomm Snapdragon 810-based mobile devices and will also be deployed through the M-Go apps on Android, Windows and iOS in the coming months, he said. According to the Qualcomm website, 60 “premium-tier” mobile devices based on the Snapdragon 810 will be in the market over the next few months, including the LG G Flex2. Qualcomm didn’t mention DTS technology under the audio section of the Snapdragon 810 page, but it did say the processor supports “professional quality audio” via Dolby Atmos and “up to 24-bit/192kHz music playback.” Meanwhile, DTS told us at CES the company was eyeing a March debut of its object-based audio technology, DTS:X (see 1501070021). The spokesman would only say the company will “announce plans soon” about DTS:X, which figures prominently in the proposal DTS submitted to vie for selection as a certified audio codec for the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard (see 1501210023). The ATSC’s call for proposals (CFP) for the ATSC 3.0 audio system (see 1412090019) included a March 9 deadline for “detailed system descriptions" from candidates. ATSC will inform “certified proponents” through letters of acceptance by March 20, according to the CFP.