Rebecca Day

The past year has seen a “huge change” in the wireless power industry, said David Green, IHS research manager, during the opening of the Wireless Power Summit. The market moved from an “industry push” model to one where “consumers are pulling technology from us,” said Green in San Diego Thursday. The challenge for 2016, as product availability increases and consumers begin to adopt wireless charging, is how to avoid customers “pushing back” if the user experience falls short, Green said. He referred to a “chicken-and-egg” dilemma, where infrastructure providers haven’t wanted to invest in wireless charging if no receivers could take advantage of the technology. Device makers, in turn, haven’t been willing to pay for receivers without a public charging infrastructure, Green said. Some 55 million wireless charging receivers shipped in 2014, and that number is expected to jump to 160 million this year, including 20 million from wearables, said Green, crediting a rise in consumer awareness. This year, consumer awareness more than doubled to 76 percent. IHS predicts a “big bump” in 2017-2018 shipments, though Green said wireless won’t soon replace wired.

The wireless charging industry was stifled by three competing industry organizations, a situation the AirFuel Alliance is looking to eclipse with an all-inclusive strategy encompassing all flavors of wireless charging, AirFuel Alliance President Ron Resnick told us. AirFuel, the new name announced Tuesday (see 1511030038) replaces the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) and Power Matters Alliance (PMA), which merged in June (see 1506010046). The Wireless Power Consortium (WPC), meanwhile, remains committed to the competing Qi standard. The AirFuel alliance envisions a “seamless, interoperable global infrastructure” that includes a public charging infrastructure for places including coffee shops and airports. For a wireless charging ecosystem to take hold, “you have to be able charge your devices in public wherever you go,” Resnick said. A working group within the alliance is focusing on public charging solutions, but Resnick conceded that venues such as airports won’t commit to wireless charging until, and if, Apple stamps its seal on a technology. "That's why they're holding back," he said. IHS released a brief analysis Wednesday, after the announcement of the AirFuel Alliance, saying it “shows their commitment to simplifying the wireless power landscape for the consumer” by “reducing the number of brand names and logos on products.” But the alliance hasn’t addressed the issue that the existing PMA and A4WP standards “are not interoperable” because they work on “completely different frequencies,” said analyst David Green. The alliance hasn’t said “how they might differentiate between these standards for existing products or any future design” that doesn’t cover both standards, said Green.

Smartphone shipments in Q3 came in under forecast, due to an iPhone miss and pricey Android models, an IDC report said. Vendors shipped 355.2 million units in Q3, said the preliminary report. Shipments grew 6.8 percent from a year ago to 355.2 million, for the second-highest quarter of shipments on record, IDC said. The 3Q shipments were “slightly below” IDC's previous forecast of 363.8 million units, largely due to “slightly lower than expected iPhone shipments” and flagship Android launches from several top-tier original equipment makers with price points “outside the consumer sweet spot,” it said Wednesday. Apple’s 48 million iPhone shipments (see 1510280033) were short of IDC’s 50.4 million unit forecast, analyst Ryan Reith told us. Consumers are becoming more aware of “alternative buying options” when buying a smartphone, Reith said. In Q3, vendors tried to “outclass each other in both features and design," leading to "fierce competition" at the high end as companies try to challenge market leaders Samsung and Apple, analyst Anthony Scarsella said. IDC expects the bulk of volume and growth to come from low-end to midrange phones, particularly in emerging markets, he said.

Amid reports of slowing in the China market, Apple is still bullish on the world’s largest population and its growing middle class, said CEO Tim Cook on an earnings call Tuesday. Referring to a McKinsey report on the expanding Chinese middle class, Cook cited “enormous change” that’s expected to produce a middle class totaling half a billion people by 2020.

Practical futurist Michael Rogers predicted that in the next decade, people will essentially pay for privacy rights, consumers won't differentiate between wireline and wireless networks and most will use numerous connected devices. During a keynote at the annual CEDIA trade show this month in Dallas, he said that “privacy will cost money.” Apple, Google and Microsoft have different policies on how they use customer data, and there's a divide forming on how much consumers are willing to pay for products and services in the personal data trade-off, he said. By the early '20s, European regulators will have established regulations, and global standards for stricter online privacy will be in place, Rogers said. He envisioned a market for “high-end privacy where you still get all the services you expect in the virtual world but you are considerably more private.” He visualized a luxury service package combining ease of use, security and privacy “that’s not a mass-market opportunity,” he said. By the early '20s, there will no longer be a delineation between wired and wireless network speeds, leading to a 24/7 connected experience, Rogers said. Consumers will be carrying or wearing five or six connected devices all the time and those devices will be managed by “seamless hand off,” he predicted. They will leave home and their network connection will automatically hand off to the car, then to a public space and then to the office, he said. “Everything around you will work better when connected to Internet: from the car to the refrigerator to picture frames.”

The emerging low-power IEEE 802.11ah Wi-Fi standard faces challenges as it attempts to address the limitations of existing 802.11 technologies, said a report released Wednesday by ABI Research. Annual 802.11ah IC chipset shipments are forecast to reach just 11 million units by 2020, with the first chipsets forecast to hit the market next year, ABI said.

Russound certified installers now have access to SiriusXM for Business, Russound said at a CEDIA news conference in Dallas. The program simplifies the process for commercial venues to play licensed music without a significant expense or “complicated reporting,” Russound said. CEO Charlie Porritt noted that playing music for the public is subject to numerous legal provisions related to copyright law, and that most music purchased through downloads or physical media is licensed only for personal use. “Many business owners find themselves liable for any related violations, even if they are unaware of the requirements,” Porritt said. With a SiriusXM for Business account, business owners have access to all of the content they need for $360 per year, with no further reporting requirements, when they use authorized Russound music streaming products, the company said.

The Kaleidescape third-generation Music Store will begin selling 4K Ultra HD movie titles “in the second half of Q4” for $30 a pop to go along with the company’s inaugural 4K Ultra HD Strato Movie Player, the company announced at a Thursday news conference at the CEDIA trade show in Dallas. Sony Pictures provides the bulk of the initial movie titles, Kaleidescape CEO Cheena Srinivasan told us. Some 200 TV episodes will be available in 4K next month, he said. Kaleidescape is working with other movie studios and 4K content providers, he said. On what’s standing in the way of offering other movie content at launch, Srinivasan said it was a “process” involving “working closely” with movie studios. “Studios are very cautious about who they license 4K content to,” Srinivasan said. “The problem with streaming 4K is that you don’t have any control over the actual bit rate and the quality that is delivered to the end consumer.” He noted that TVs that display bit rates while playing streamed content typically show variable bit rates during streaming, which can jump around from 480p to 720p, depending on available bandwidth. “Sometimes you will get to 2160p but it will throttle back,” he said. “Even though they say it is 4K, to keep consumers engaged and not interrupt their viewing experience, [streaming services] throttle the bit rate so the quality is actually not 4K.” He suggested Kaleidescape customers get a business Internet line from their ISP, and he also advised downloading movies “when everybody else is asleep.”

Some 50 million vehicles will offer built-in wireless device charging by 2020, up from 4 million this year, said a report by Juniper Research released Monday. Wireless charging will enable new in-vehicle services including on-board audio streaming and context-specific notification filtering, said the industry research firm. Data exchange capability via wireless charging will enable automatic driver adjustments such as the height, incline and position of the seat and mirrors when the driver’s phone begins to charge, analyst James Moar told us. The transmission range via wireless charging is short enough to prevent the transmission of conflicting signals from passengers’ phones, unlike Bluetooth, he said. Data exchange could automate other driver user experiences such as climate control and music playlists, Moar said. Automakers will be able to provide software-based services via streaming notifications between a smartphone and the dashboard rather than having to keep on-board firmware and hardware updated, said the report. Several smartphone brands have incorporated wireless charging capability into devices, but consumers are largely unaware of the feature, Juniper said. Samsung is leading the way with the Galaxy S6, and more brands will begin to promote the concept over the next few years, though phones will continue to ship with a wired charger as a standard accessory in the near term, it said. Over a third of all smartphones shipping in 2020 are forecast to have wireless charging built in, said Juniper. For wireless charging to succeed, carriers and phone retailers will have to give consumers an option for wireless chargers supplied with new devices, said Moar in the report. "The technology will not take off if it remains a $30+ additional purchase.”

Hoping to do what some technology companies haven’t successfully done, Israeli gesture recognition company EyeSight is bringing to market a plug-in device that controls connected devices by finger motions. The AC-powered device, which resembles a horizontal portable speaker, has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios, an infrared code database for 150,000 devices, and computer vision software and sensors, CEO Gideon Shmuel told us on a press tour in New York.