Some 21 million smart home devices will be sold this year, and ADT and AT&T are the best known among consumers as service providers for such products, said a white paper released Friday from CEA and Parks Associates. The number of total devices will grow to 25 million next year, 30 million in 2016 and 36 million in 2017, the report said. Fueling the growth is the increased penetration of broadband in homes, said the white paper, predicting that by the end of this year, 79 percent of U.S. households will be connected to the Internet, and 80 percent of those will have a working home network. Broadband connectivity has led to a new generation of smart home devices -- born out of networked security systems taking advantage of broadband for surveillance purposes -- and that's changing how systems and devices are managed in the home, it said. No smart home device in a Parks consumer survey of 10,000 broadband households claimed more than 6 percent ownership, it said. Low awareness has been an obstacle to broader acceptance of smart home products, Parks said. Security companies have provided some awareness, and more has come from the “cool factor” of products like Nest’s Thermostat, it said. Among respondents who headed a household, roughly one in 10 was aware of smart home products or services, and fewer knew where to buy them, it said. Brand awareness among those surveyed was low, and not accurate. Respondents were asked to cite three manufacturers of smart home products, and 5 percent of respondents named Apple, which has not yet delivered product to the market. Nest followed Apple with 3 percent. ADT and AT&T ranked first and second with 6-7 percent awareness as smart home product manufacturers. When asked about service providers, 16 percent of respondents named ADT and AT&T, Parks said. For the most part, manufacturers in the product area “haven’t yet made a significant mark,” Parks said.
Wearables company Sensoria will launch in Q1 a line of $99 smart socks designed for runners. The socks, which incorporate textile sensors, pair with a Bluetooth Smart anklet that attaches to the cuff of one sock with a magnet. The sensors deliver standard fitness tracking data including number of steps, calories, altitude and distance and add information specific to the foot such as track cadence, foot landing technique and weight distribution, the company said. The socks “may help” runners identify poor running styles that could cause pain, the company said. The accompanying mobile app coaches a runner in real time with audio cues, it said.
Despite efforts to entice consumers with $50 and $100 discounts on the 7- and 10-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook tablets before Black Friday, early holiday season sales results “weren’t quite up to our expectations,” said Barnes & Noble CEO Michael Huseby on an earnings call last week. But the companies aren’t pushing “a red alert” button “because we have the whole holiday, Christmas” and “just about” all of December left, Huseby said. Propping up the Nook brand with a Samsung Galaxy tablet at its core didn’t help Barnes & Noble’s troubled Nook segment in fiscal Q2, the first full quarter that the Nook-branded Samsung tablet was available for sale, but the company plans to continue selling the devices, Huseby said. Sales for Nook hardware, content and accessories tumbled 41 percent year over year, the company said. Nook device and accessories sales plummeted 64 percent to $19 million on lower sales volume, while digital content fell 21 percent to $45 million, the company said. The results surprised some analysts who had predicted the Samsung hardware would shore up sales of the struggling Nook brand. Janney Capital Markets had expected the Samsung-built devices to help “spur demand and drive new customer adoption,” but said in a research note that the Nook Galaxy tablets are “not performing as well as originally expected.” On the earnings call, Huseby cited “a lower demand for tablet devices in general” due to market saturation but believes the Nook tablets are priced “right.” Huseby expressed support for Samsung as its partner, calling the Galaxy Tab 4s “great devices” and said Barnes & Noble has no plans to discontinue Galaxy Nook tablet sales. “It's important that we can offer an e-reading experience” in a color tablet, in addition to its GlowLight e-reader, Huseby said. He said Barnes & Noble and Microsoft agreed to end their partnership in Nook Media.
Qualcomm agreed to spend $7 million for 7 percent ownership of Qterics, the new Silicon Image subsidiary that will supply services and components and devices for Internet of Things-capable TVs, smartphones, tablets, routers, home automation devices and smart appliances, the companies said in a joint announcement Thursday. Qterics will be composed of Silicon Image’s UpdateLogic services business and other of its software and IP holdings, they said. "The vast expansion of Internet-enabled devices enables new applications and services, but only if the devices can be properly managed." UpdateLogic, now under the Qterics umbrella, has been a leading supplier of device management and remote access services already deployed in "tens of millions" of CE products, they said.
Frontier Communications said it’s offering a “Threebie” bundle of broadband, cable and voice services through Dec. 31 that includes a three-year guarantee that broadband service for bundle subscribers will cost $19.99 per month with a qualifying voice service. “Through most of this year, Frontier included a two-year price guarantee on Internet and phone,” said Frontier Executive Vice President Cecilia McKenney in a Thursday news release. Frontier said it’s also offering identity protection service to its customers. The $9.99-per-month Frontier Secure service will secure a subscriber’s personal financial information, along with offering credit bureau monitoring and lost wallet services. “High-profile data breaches at major retailers in 2014 prove that protection from financial fraud is more important than ever,” McKenney said.
IHS’s 2014 forecast for worldwide unit sales of 58 million wireless charging receivers and 20 million wireless charging transmitters is going to fall short when the company releases figures for the year, said Ryan Sanderson, IHS analyst, in an interview Thursday. But numbers will be better than IHS anticipated midyear after CES and Mobile World Congress didn’t yield the expected number of new smartphones or tablets with wireless charging capability, Sanderson said. While the industry will “struggle” to reach estimates for this year, IHS expects to still see significant growth for the wireless charging market over 2013, he said. Sanderson expects growth in the wireless charging market to get a boost going forward from the wearables category. The Moto 360 smart watch has Qi inductive wireless charging built in, and Apple CEO Tim Cook referenced wireless charging for the Apple Watch at the wearable's product announcement in September. A caveat to wireless charging for wearables derives from the category name itself, Sanderson said. “It’s called a wearable, so the consumer shouldn’t really have to take it off to charge it.” Technologies today require users to do that, either placing the wearable on a surface or near a transmitter for charging. That will change in the near future with far-field wireless charging over a distance of as much as 30 feet, Sanderson said. Energous, with WattUp technology that won a CES Innovations award for 2015, announced this week it has joined the Power Matters Alliance and completed initial FCC Part 15 certification testing for its WattUp receivers. Energous’ technology delivers “scalable power” using the same radio bands as a Wi-Fi router, according to company literature, and allows “meaningful, useable power” that users can tap into while roaming so the device doesn’t have to be plugged in or positioned on a mat for charging, it said. The wireless charging market began slowly in 2014 but picked up midyear with the introduction of products with embedded Qi receivers, including the LG G3, Google Nexus 6 and, more recently, the Nokia 830, which has a receiver that’s both PMA- and Qi-enabled, Sanderson said. He said he “wouldn’t be surprised” to see more developments in multimode, multidevice wireless charging products. On the likelihood of a unified standard, Sanderson said that without A4WP (Alliance for Wireless Power) charging products in the market, “it’s not a level playing field” for consumers to compare products and decide which technologies they prefer. A4WP had expected to have Rezence products in the market by year-end, but that hasn’t happened. A spokesman for A4WP didn’t comment. Over the next couple of years, Sanderson expects to see much more multimode and multistandard support for the tightly coupled technology -- Qi, PMA and Rezence -- as manufacturers look to safeguard themselves in a multihorse field.
The global software defined storage (SDS) market will grow from an estimated $1.4 billion this year to $6.2 billion in 2019, the MarketsandMarkets research firm said Thursday in a report. The financial services, healthcare and manufacturing sectors will be the largest adopters of SDS technology, the report said. North America will be the largest market in 2019, but the Asia Pacific region will experience higher growth over time, MarketsandMarkets said.
Superlatives were many, but specifics were few, in Meridian Audio’s announcement Thursday that it will commercialize early next year a lossless coding platform that’s "poised to change the way people enjoy music all over the world." Billed as "a revolutionary British technology," the innovation, called Master Quality Authenticated (MQA), was launched at a London briefing Thursday. MQA has been designed to "reverse the trend, in which sound quality has been continually sacrificed for convenience," Meridian said. "Vital elements of our music have been thrown away to fit thousands of songs into a pocket or millions in a cloud. With MQA there is no sacrifice; it brings us right back to the enthralling sound of live music. MQA captures and preserves nuances and vital information that current music files obscure or discard, but in a file that is small and convenient to download or stream." MQA allows listeners to experience "every intricate detail the microphone heard, offering music fans the purest ever sound," the company said. "And it’s based firmly in science. For the first time in history, music fans will be able to hear at home what the artist created and approved in the recording studio, and MQA confirms its exact delivery."
Sonos made available a software upgrade Thursday that will allow users to add multiple accounts within a music service, find music more easily across sources through the search function, and boost the performance of the Sonos Playbar, the company said. It also added control from the lock screen for Android devices. Following the update, Sonos owners can associate up to 32 music service accounts with their systems, including multiple accounts for the same music service. Each Sonos controller can have a different default music service account for customized music, the company said. The upgrade to Playbar is said to deliver an improved soundstage and balance at any volume level.
Intel and Luxottica Group will collaborate on a multiyear research and development alliance "to fuse premium, luxury and sports eyewear with smart technology," the companies said in a joint announcement Wednesday. Luxottica controls a broad portfolio of eyewear brands, including Oakley, Oliver Peoples and Ray-Ban. Its licensed brands include Bulgari, Burberry, Chanel, Coach, Dolce & Gabbana, Donna Karan, Giorgio Armani, Michael Kors, Polo Ralph Lauren, Prada, Tiffany and Versace. The companies aim to push R&D "boundaries" to anticipate "what smart technology for eyewear will look like in the future," they said. The collaboration will yield its first product next year, they said. "The growth of wearable technology is creating a new playing field for innovation," said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. Intel and Luxottica will mesh their "respective ecosystems" to help drive "a much faster pace of innovation and push the envelope of what’s possible," he said.