Gokhale Method received FCC approval for its PostureTracker, a wearable sensor designed to alleviate back pain. The tracker, which comes with a wireless charging pad based on Energous’ WattUp charging technology, is expected to ship in Q1, Energous announced Tuesday. The two sensors charge simultaneously on the pad.

Q4 industry OLED panel revenue will increase 49% sequentially, reaching an all-time high of nearly $12 billion, projected Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. The iPhone 12's later-than-expected release dates “depressed OLED panel shipment sales in Q3 and accelerated sales in Q4,” said DSCC. Q3 OLED panel revenue totaled $8 billion, down 3.3% from the 2019 quarter, but DSCC’s Q4 OLED revenue forecast of $11.9 billion would be up 46% from Q4 2019. The “pattern” of OLED panel revenue is “heavily weighted by smartphones, by far the largest application” for OLED technology in monetary terms, it said. Q3 OLED smartphone revenue was down 9% from a year earlier with the iPhone launch delay, but a 51% Q4 revenue increase to $9.8 billion is expected.

Hyundai will pay SoftBank $1.1 billion for an 80% interest in mobile robotics firm Boston Dynamics, said the companies Friday. SoftBank will keep a 20% interest through one of its subsidiaries, they said. Hyundai said the acquisition will be “another major step” toward its “strategic transformation” into a smart mobility solution provider. Hyundai “has invested substantially in development of future technologies,” including autonomous driving and vehicle connectivity, it said. The transaction is expected to close by June, said Hyundai and SoftBank.

Twenty-one CES 2021 exhibitors plan half-hour news conferences Jan. 11, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST, said CTA’s Media Day schedule released Thursday. Hisense, Intel/Mobileye and Sony have their time slots to themselves, but the others will need to compete with one or two companies with events scheduled concurrently. “Top exhibitors will break news to a media-only audience, just as they would normally do at CES Media Days in Las Vegas,” said CTA. Media Day news conferences at the physical Las Vegas show typically run 45 minutes each, not 30. CES 2021 listed 862 exhibitors as signed on through midday Thursday, up from 806 a day earlier. CTA said 4,400 exhibitors participated in the physical CES 2020 January in Las Vegas.

True wireless designs were 45% of Q3 headphone shipments, but supply side issues with Bluetooth chips inhibited availability of new models, leaving brands to delay product launches until 2021, reported Futuresource. Global headphone shipments grew 19% year on year following two quarters of decline. True wireless featured in most new product launches, covering a range of price points. The $50-$99 segment is “highly competitive and overcrowded,” analyst Adriana Blanco said Tuesday.

After staking a commanding lead in the true wireless earbud category with two versions of in-ear AirPods ($159 and $249), Apple took an old-school turn with Tuesday’s announcement of the $549 AirPods Max over-ear headphones. AirPods Max have an Apple H1 chip built into each ear cup and use “computational audio” from the chips’ 10 audio cores -- capable of 9 billion operations per second -- to provide adaptive equalization, active noise cancellation, a transparency mode and spatial audio, said the company. It didn’t respond to questions on whether it’s continuing to develop the company's Beats by Dre headphones line.

Investcorp will sell German consumer cybersecurity company Avira to NortonLifeLock for about $360 million in a transaction expected to close in Q1, said the institutional investment firm Monday (see also personals section, this issue). Buying Avira will speed NortonLifeLock’s expansion in Europe and emerging markets and gives it access to more than 30 million "active" devices, it said.

Foldable smartphone panel unit shipments are expected to grow 454% this year to 3.1 million, Display Supply Chain Consultants CEO Ross Young told the virtual Display Market Outlook Conference Wednesday. Panels for the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip and Z Fold2 dominate the market, he said. Growth was lower than expected because Commerce Department export restrictions on Huawei prevented the company from introducing its Mate X2 in-folding smartphone as planned in Q4, he said. That assures Samsung will maintain market leadership in foldables, at least until Apple jumps in with a foldable iPhone, he said. 5G “finally took off” in foldables in 2020's second half with Samsung’s launch of the Z Fold2 and Z Flip 5G and Motorola’s debut of the Razr 5G, he said. In 2020, 52% of the foldables shipped will be 4G models, but 5G is expected to “dominate” in 2021 and beyond, he said. DSCC is forecasting Apple will field its first foldable iPhone in 2023 with a clamshell design, followed by an in-fold model in 2024, said Young. Apple’s iPhone supplier Foxconn is believed to be testing “large volumes of foldable panels” this quarter, he said. Foxconn didn't respond to questions. “Given Samsung’s limited sales in the U.S., we think Apple could grab a lot of share with foldables in the U.S. if they can be convinced it’s a durable product,” said Young. DSCC expects Apple would source foldable panels from Samsung Display, he said. Apple didn’t comment.

“Rapid recovery” in the semiconductor industry “appears to be stressing significant portions of the supply chain,” said Marvell Technology Group CEO Matt Murphy on a fiscal Q3 investor call Thursday. “These supply challenges are currently limiting our ability to fully satisfy the increase in demand for some of our networking products.” Marvell’s quarter ended Oct. 31. Marvell customarily enters every quarter with “a fairly steady level of delinquency,” defined as the volume of orders on hand that it “can't supply within the quarter,” he said. “Heading into Q4, that number is significantly larger than we've had.” That Marvell customers are adapting to the constraints by placing “longer lead times on us” is only exacerbating the delinquency, said Murphy. The stock closed 4.7% lower Friday at $43.38. When Marvell talks to its supply-chain partners, “there is an anticipation that certainly within the first quarter or two in calendar '21, that we will see some improvements there,” said Murphy. It’s forecasting $785 million in revenue for Q4 ending early February, plus or minus 5%. Marvell would end the quarter up 9% from the year earlier at the midrange of that guidance. Revenue in Marvell’s networking business in Q3 was $445 million, up 10% sequentially from fiscal Q2 and 35% from the year-earlier quarter, said Murphy. Q3 was Marvell’s fifth-straight quarter of sequential revenue growth in 5G, he said. In the fiscal first half, Marvell’s application-specific IC business drove much of the 5G growth, “benefiting from the rapid deployments in China,” he said. Though the wireless infrastructure ASIC business remained strong in Q3, “the sequential growth was driven primarily by standard and semi-custom product shipments to Samsung,” he said. 5G rollout outside China “is starting to pick up,” said Murphy. “We expect consumer demand for 5G services will continue to grow worldwide,” especially following the launch of new Apple 5G phones, he said. If Qualcomm's forecast comes to pass that 500 million 5G-enabled smartphones will ship globally next year, “I think that's going to drive a lot of demand for networks,” he said. Marvell’s 5G customer base “continues to expand,” said Murphy. A second regional 5G infrastructure customer picked Marvell's Octeon microprocessors to power its new 5G base stations, he said. The unnamed customer plans to “engage” with Marvell on a “variety” of radio access network architectures for 5G, including “emerging” open RAN initiatives. By adding ORAN and virtualized RAN capabilities to its existing 5G offerings, “Marvell will be the ideal semiconductor partner with a complete 5G platform capable of supporting all RAN architectures on a common hardware and software framework,” said Murphy. “This is a critical differentiator for Marvell,” he said. “Most 5G networks will have a complex hybrid architecture to support a diverse set of deployment scenarios.”

Wearables, including adult smartwatches, sports watches and hearables, have grown in an overall 2020 CE market that has “trended towards decline,” reported Futuresource Thursday. “Consumers have been exploring alternatives to the gym, buying home workout equipment, and paying attention to a wide range of digital health products,” said analyst Stephen Mears, highlighting hearables with activity and health tracking functionality and wrist wearables with advanced biometric sensors. Hearables will account for more than 55% of global wearables market shipments this year in the category comprising wearable smartphones, extended reality head-mounted displays, fitness devices and connected watches. Mears cited opportunities in hearing correction wearables, with more than 400 million people worldwide having hearing loss, half under 50; of those, fewer than 10% own a hearing aid. Wrist wearables have potential in monitoring high blood pressure, respiratory disease, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a “lucrative” opportunity for vendors, if managed correctly, he said. Though the ear is better for tracking health indicators such as heart rate and blood pressure, wrist wearables are marketed as fitness and health products and have screens allowing consumers to engage with data in real time, he noted. The future for wearables involves an “integrated ecosystem of wrist and ear worn wearables, with biometric tracking happening in the ear, while activity tracking and data visualisation/processing will happen on the wrist,” said Mears: “This ecosystem of products will prove to be more compelling for consumers than either device could on its own.” Apple's and Fitbit’s efforts to leverage their smartwatch platforms through service subscriptions point "to where the category as a whole is heading in the next few years."