The U.S. market revenue for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) will grow to $15 billion in 2020 from $5 billion last year, an IGI Consulting report said. Growth will be driven by the commercial and the “do-it-yourself” markets, IGI said in a news release. Fiber optic technology, developed for telecom, has a wide range of possible uses in the UAV field, the report said (http://bit.ly/1ve3grV). Fiber offers small size and weight with a potential for low cost, it said. Regulation is the biggest burden for UAV growth, the report said. “The only way the regulators will act is through political pressure” from “big hitters,” such as Apple, Amazon and Google, it said. Federal agencies, like the FCC, Federal Aviation Administration and NTIA, have the potential to foster growth in the UAV civil market, IGI said.
Netflix and Zayo Group colocation subsidiary zColo will be the primary infrastructure sponsors of the Florida Internet Exchange (FL-IX), zColo said. Akamai, CloudFlare and Host.net are FL-IX’s other initial member participants. FL-IX will be a member-managed peering platform serving the southeastern U.S. and several Latin American markets, and will be based out of zColo’s Miami data center. Netflix’s participation in FL-IX “reflects our commitment to the Open IX model and providing greater optionality for exchanging traffic,” said Dave Temkin, Netflix director-network architecture and strategy, in a Zayo news release Tuesday. “The Miami market needs more connectivity alternatives to NAP of the Americas and we anticipate FL-IX will be well received by many major content and network providers.” Netflix will provide switching equipment and related technology to run FL-IX, while zColo will house FL-IX and will provide power and underlying network connectivity (http://bit.ly/1vwror3).
Among leading tablet suppliers, Amazon and Samsung are "locked in a tight race for second" behind Apple, "which overall shows signs of cooling even as adoption remains high," Parks Associates said Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1EYvYkC). It canvassed 10,000 U.S. broadband homes in Q1 and found that 16 percent owned an Amazon tablet and 14 percent a Samsung tablet, while Apple's share fell to 37 percent from 46 percent in Q1 two years earlier, it said. More than six in every 10 U.S. broadband homes now own a tablet, and slightly more than half own both a smartphone and a tablet, it said. "Tablet sales in recent quarters have been hampered by a longer replacement cycle compared to smartphones', a lack of new features, and the popularity of phablets, which negatively affects sales of smaller-sized tablets." The next iPad, Parks said, is widely expected to feature Apple Pay, the digital wallet service that Apple introduced when it debuted the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last month. "Apple Pay on iPad can go a long way in helping Apple arrest its shrinking market share in the tablet marketplace," it said. "Apple already announced Apple Pay with its iPhone 6, and the company has the clout to secure the necessary support from major merchants. If Apple is able to deliver a seamless payment experience, with tight security and broad merchant support, the firm could turn the mobile wallet into a differentiator for the tablet market." Apple Pay will come to market without the support of Best Buy and Walmart, which each said last month they won’t support the service at launch for reasons that neither would disclose 1409150011.
Private cloud service Blue Box raised $10 million in a Series B round, said a company blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1EYXChw). The funding round included Voyager Capital and Founders Collective, it said. The lead investor wasn't identified. Blue Box launched in May, it said.
While some mobile banking users claimed to have no major concerns about mobile banking, more than 56 percent said they have fears when accessing their bank information on smartphones, a GOBankingRates study found. About 37 percent of smartphone users polled cited identity theft as a major concern, and almost 9 percent were worried about technical errors, GOBankingRates said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1nmcjp1). Women were 65 percent more likely than men to worry about technical errors resulting in missing funds, it said. Men were 85 percent more likely than women to be worried about lack of paper statements, and 37 percent more likely to be concerned with misuse of information, it said. “Respondents in the Northeast and South were more concerned with identity theft than those in the West and Midwest.” To obtain the information, GOBankingRates surveyed 790 Americans, it said.
Demand from the growing entry- and mid-range smartphone segments drove global shipments of on-cell TFT LCD touch panels to more than 20 million in the first half of 2014, compared with shipments of 4.7 million in all of 2013, said DisplaySearch. By 2018, shipments of on-cell TFT LCD panels are expected to reach 129 million, it said. Embedded touch panels of all types -- including in-cell and on-cell TFT LCD, as well as on-cell AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) -- accounted for 20 percent of all mobile phone displays in 2012, 29 percent in 2013 and an expected 32 percent in 2014, DisplaySearch said. Apple and Samsung are the largest customers for in-cell TFT LCD and on-cell AMOLED, said Calvin Hsieh, research director, while on-cell TFT LCD tends to be adopted by other brands. As the smartphone market matures, consumers have grown to expect more features and functions at lower prices, pushing Huawei, Motorola and other brands to adjust product strategies, Hsieh said. “These brands are now cultivating the supply chain for additional touch-embedded panel sources as they adopt on-cell TFT LCD solutions to focus on entry-level and mid-range smartphone segments.” On-cell TFT LCD with single-layer patterning is being used to increase share in the entry-level and mid-range smartphone segments, he said. CPT Technology, HannStar, Innolux and Tianma are among the panel makers that shipped on-cell TFT LCD panels in first half 2014, adopting single-layer patterning “to save photomask fees and to raise yield rates,” Hsieh said. “The initial success of on-cell TFT LCD brings great hope to panel makers that are looking to compete with touch module makers.”
The "user-oriented subsystems" of the Tesla Model S electric vehicle "have more in common with a tablet or smartphone than they do with a conventional automobile," IHS said Tuesday in a preliminary "teardown" report (http://bit.ly/1vZVLDO). In designing the Model S, Tesla "really wanted to do things differently and employed virtual controls -- rather than physical knobs and buttons -- to take over the user experience," IHS said. "This approach required a major investment in big displays and touch panels, similar to the approach Apple took when designing the iPhone and iPad." The electronics "cost structure" of the Model S, the use of large displays in the cabin and its use of touch-screen controls make "the Tesla experience more like a media tablet or high-end smartphone than a traditional automobile," it said. "It’s like looking at the components from the latest mobile device from an Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy product. When it comes to the user-facing segment of the Model S’s electronics, the company has radically departed from business-as-usual in the automotive market." The "huge" 17-inch display and touch screen on the Model S are "much larger than the average automotive infotainment interface," it said. Use of an Nvidia Tegra 3, 1.4-GHz quad-core processor gives the Model S "computing power in the same league with recent smartphone and tablet designs," it said.
Consumers in China, Germany, South Korea, the U.K. and the U.S. see the "potential" in using smart watches to carry plane tickets or as security keys for their computers and online accounts, a GfK survey found (http://bit.ly/1xPrPuq). The research firm canvassed 1,000 smartphone owners in each market to gauge their interest in being able to carry out specific functions with a smart watch, assuming they could save and send their data securely, it said. It found that among Americans and Chinese, there’s "openness" for using smart watches as identity cards and for payment systems, but Europeans "are much more hesitant about these functions," it said. The survey found that smart watches "have the potential for a wide range of uses," it said. "Gathering sports activities, navigation, phone calls and apps are the main applications that surveyed consumers are interested in at present." But "due to the nature" of a smart watch being worn on the wrist, "it could also serve as proof of identity, a travel ticket holder or a method of making payments at the checkout," the firm said. Nearly half of those surveyed in the five countries said they would be interested in using a smart watch to provide doctors or hospitals with personal healthcare data, it said. "However, people in different countries differ widely in how far they are ready to entrust sensitive health information" to a smart watch, it said. Nearly seven in every 10 Chinese canvassed said they would be interested in that application, vs. only half in the U.S. and 43 percent in South Korea, it said. "European consumers are more hesitant, with around one third of respondents in the U.K. expressing an interest and just one quarter in Germany. Men are rather more open to this idea than women and the difference between age groups is even more marked, with interest in using a smart watch for their health data increasing with age."
Ultra HD pay-TV viewership will reach 46 million homes globally by 2018, Parks Associates said in a forecast Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1u155nH). Pay-TV providers will deploy 4K content delivery "as a differentiator, especially among younger consumers who are more likely to use new pay-TV features, such as TV Everywhere and cloud DVR, but also have slightly lower subscription rates for pay-TV services," Parks said. In the U.S., 82 percent of consumers in the 18-22 age group have a pay-TV subscription, compared with 87 percent among older adults, it said. "To enjoy the true benefits of 4K, three things need to be present: the television, the content, and a way to get the content to the TV," Parks said. Parks thinks 4K "can deliver an enhanced experience to viewers, but these three factors are not yet aligned," it said. "Getting 4K content to the TV remains a key challenge as is the pace of production of 4K content."
A bitcoin hardware manufacturer asked a court where the FTC sued it to dismiss the case. Butterfly Labs's Friday motion asked U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Missouri, to dismiss the allegations of violating FTC Act Section 5(a), contending the company's representations weren't misleading. The FTC is going after the company for delaying or failing to deliver bitcoin mining computers, rendering them useless, and a judge let Butterfly resume limited operations after its temporary shutdown 1410060004">1410060004. "No reasonable Bitcoin-mining consumer could have concluded that the anticipated shipping-date and product-development representations" on which the FTC complaint were based "were either material or misleading," said a motion to dismiss in case No. 14-CV-0815-W-BCW. "Since the filing of the FTC complaint, Butterfly Labs has been working to restart its suspended business operations as well as defending itself against the FTC’s media campaign claiming that Butterfly Labs is 'bogus' and its people are nothing more than 'scammers,'" said the company in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1Da8FCI).