Zens will bow at IFA this week the first wireless charging stands with a lightning connector, said the company Wednesday. Filling in for Apple’s promise of the ill-fated, tri-charging AirCharge wireless charging pad, the Zens ZEDC07 ($139) simultaneously charges an iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods. Rather than charging from a pad, the ZEDC07, with a total 20-watt output, has a lean-back Qi charger for the phone and charges an Apple Watch from a customized charging transmitter mounted to a horizontal aluminum bar; the AirPods connect to the base of the unit via lightning. The watch module and lightning connector are Apple MFi-certified, it said. A built-in USB port enables charging for a fourth device. Zens also is launching the ZESC13 wireless charger ($59), with 10-watt output for a single Qi device, and a 2.4-Amp USB port that allows wired iPad fast-charging. The 20-watt ZEDC06 ($99) wirelessly charges two devices simultaneously; a built-in USB port charges a third device, said the company.

The Wireless Power Consortium revealed its wireless charging standard for small kitchen appliances, Ki Cordless Kitchen. Philips will demonstrate at IFA this week a blender/food processor, juicer and air fryer, emailed Hans Kablau, chairman-WPC Kitchen Work Group. The Ki logo indicates safety and interoperability for wireless power for cordless kitchen devices up to 2,200 watts, said WPC. The standard allows Ki transmitters to be placed beneath countertops and in new induction cooktops, it said. The Ki standard draft specification is available to Wireless Power Consortium members; they'll determine their commercialization timetable, a WPC spokesperson emailed. Communication between the appliance and transmitter is handled by near-field communication, said Kablau. NFC controls the amount of power transferred and enables smart features. It prevents a smartphone from inadvertently overheating when placed on a coil, the spokesperson said. Ki's “essentially the same technology” as the magnetic induction wireless charging method used by Qi, she said, though Ki coils are much larger. Another difference is that Ki only transmits energy that’s consumed as power vs. Qi technology, which transmits energy that’s stored by the receiver so it can power a phone on the go. Since a Ki receiver doesn’t store power, when appliances are removed from the transmitter, power transfer ceases and the appliance shuts off, she said.

Via an update, Digiarty software can reduce the size of 4K UHD videos by 90 percent, said the developer Friday. A one-hour, 30-frame-per-second 4K GoPro file uses about 26 GB, and an iPhone about 23 GB to shoot an hour of 4K HEVC video at 60 fps, it said, noting large 4K video files can mean slow upload speeds and choppy playback errors.

A “pessimistic outlook” on the world economy from the U.S.-China trade war led to a 3.5 percent production drop in global worldwide smartphone assembly shipments in June, reported IDC Wednesday. More of the same is forecast for July and August: IDC expects smartphone original device manufacturer and electronics manufacturing services' assembly volume to shrink due to Samsung and Huawei lowering regional market targets, high inventory and the U.S.-China trade war, said analyst Sean Kao. Overall in Q2, worldwide smartphone assembly shipment volume grew 12 percent year on year to 332.6 million due largely to lower inventories in Q1 and increased competition, IDC said. Assembly shipment volume from Chinese smartphone ODMs and EMSes rose to 51.3 percent in Q2 from 40.7 percent in Q1, said Kao.

The sluggish smart augmented reality glasses market is “picking up pace” in industrial and enterprise segments, but mass consumer adoption is “elusive, if not years away," reported Tractica Monday. It cited “growing pains,” as the technology has fallen short of end-user expectations, but projects the market will grow from 101,000 units in 2018 to 19.7 million units annually by 2025. The form factor could replace tablets and other handheld devices on the manufacturing floor, said analyst Sherril Hanson. Compelling mixed reality glass technology, compact form factors, wider field of view and immersive capabilities will help smart glasses break through across multiple segments, including consumer, said Hanson.

Stepping down as HP president-CEO “to tend to a family health matter” (see personals section of this issue) was a decision Dion Weisler made “following a great deal of reflection” and was “among the hardest choices I’ve ever had to make,” said Weisler in opening HP's fiscal Q3 call Thursday. “There is nothing more important to me than my family.” Serving as HP’s first CEO after the 2015 separation from HP Enterprise “has been the honor of my career,” he said. The HP board “has had a rigorous succession-planning process since day one of our company," he said. The process. he said, "led the board to exactly the right leader” in Enrique Lores, president of HP’s imaging and printing business, who becomes CEO in November. The stock trended 6.2 percent lower after hours Thursday at $17.75.

Hardware could play a pivotal role in streaming music growth, blogged Futuresource. At mass adoption in many places, its next frontier is to win over radio and casual listeners, said Alexandre Jornod. Spotify, recently surpassed in listeners in the U.S. by Apple, could rely on partnerships with smart speaker makers to grow vs. Amazon and Google, which add free versions of their music services to their Echo and Google Home smart speakers, said the analyst. Though Apple has HomePod, it expanded by making Apple Music the default streaming app on the iPhone: in markets where Apple Music has 3 million-plus subscribers, including the U.S., the company has at least 30 percent of the smartphone market, Jornod noted this week.

Apple announced availability of its virtual credit card Tuesday. The virtual card, which has no annual or late fees, is stored in the Wallet app on an iPhone; a "titanium" hard version with a chip can be used at locations that don't have Apple Pay, but it doesn't have identifying information. Users who want to use Apple Card to buy an item online will find their card number, PIN and expiration date in the Wallet app on their phone. Because of the security and privacy architecture created for its credit card, Apple “does not know where a customer shopped, what they bought or how much they paid,” said the company, which is using Goldman Sachs as its issuing bank and Mastercard for its global payments network. Owners of iPhone 6 and later phones can apply for the card via the Wallet app. Users can reach customer support 24/7, said Apple, which uses machine learning and Apple Maps to tag transactions to merchant names and locations in Wallet.

Consumers should have the freedom to buy spare parts and “choose who performs repairs” when their devices fail, commented Californian Gary Linsky in the FTC’s Nixing the Fix proceeding, posted Monday in docket FTC-2019-0013. The agency is probing whether manufacturers’ third-party repair restrictions undercut the consumer protections in the 1975 Moss-Magnuson Warranty Act (see 1903130060). It’s accepting comments in the docket through Sept. 16. Right to repair is “good policy” for “keeping prices competitive and reducing waste,” said Linsky. As a former consumer electronics retailer, “I have seen countless examples of devices and equipment worth hundreds of dollars scrapped due to hindered access to repairs,” that easily could have been fixed “with a part that costs a few dollars at most,” he said. “Consumers think little about these impediments” when buying a device “but feel stuck when faced with a need for repair,” he said. “Without the access to parts and outside repairers the manufacturers are in effect leasing you the product until a fault occurs, at which time, by controlling repair access and price, they economically prematurely obsolete your device.” Most retailers have phased out repairs, and the “major national chains” tell their customers to fend for themselves with the manufacturer, said Linsky.

Nearly 14 million smart home controllers will sell in the U.S. in 2024, doubling from about 7 million this year, reported Parks Associates Friday. “Device manufacturers are increasingly aware of the negative impact of security and privacy concerns on smart home industry growth, so major players including Google and Amazon are designing device features to restrict accessibility to consumer data.” Parks estimates only 37 percent of U.S. broadband homes “trust that companies with access to their data will keep it safe,” it said. The development of facial and fingerprint authentication “allows device manufacturers to establish a level of security stronger than voice but still convenient to the consumer,” said Parks. “Ultimately, voice technology will develop, where unique voices can be used for biometric authentication in and of itself, but current far-field voice recognition technology is not yet up to the security challenge.”