Virtual- and augmented-reality hardware and accessory sales in the five weeks ended Christmas more than doubled over the 2020 period, NPD reported Thursday. "Consumers continue to look for unique entertainment experiences,” said analyst Ben Arnold, amid "challenges consumers faced in securing popular gaming consoles.”

Apple generated 22% of Q4 global smartphone shipments on strong iPhone 13 demand; Samsung followed at 20%, said a preliminary Canalys report Tuesday. Supply chain problems and COVID-19 limited overall shipment growth to 1%. Apple had “unprecedented” iPhone sales in mainland China on “aggressive pricing,” said the research firm. Though Apple’s supply chain is “starting to recover,” it was forced to cut production in Q4 due to shortages of key components, but supply chain disruptions affected low-end vendors the most, said analyst Nicole Peng. “Component manufacturers are eking out additional production, but it will take years for major foundries to significantly increase chip capacity.” Smartphone brands are responding by tweaking device specifications in response to available materials, approaching emerging chipmakers to secure new sources for ICs, focusing product lines on best-selling models and staggering new product releases, she said: Bottlenecks won't ease until the second half.

Comcast and the Team Gleason Foundation are collaborating on the latest version of Comcast's Xfinity Adaptive Remote to give customers with disabilities control of Xfinity devices with assistive technology, they said Wednesday. The latest update adds the ability to assign custom buttons that execute an action or voice command of the customer’s choosing. They gave as examples toggling closed captions, searching for sports events and accessing the view from the connected front door camera. Team Gleason Foundation, founded by former New Orleans Saints player Steve Gleason after his diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, focuses on improving life for people living with ALS through technology and equipment.

Qualcomm Technologies is using NRF 2022, the retail industry trade show at New York’s Javits Center, to showcase “how IoT technologies are helping retailers digitally transform their environments and processes,” blogged Art Miller, global head-retail IoT. “Our solutions improve in-store experiences by bringing the best of ‘online’ to the offline world, reducing friction at each stage of the retail journey and providing inspiration and advice to consumers, ultimately enhancing their shopping experience.” Examples include deploying robots for cleaning store floors, or using augmented-reality devices for training store employees, said Miller on Friday. NRF 2022 was to open Sunday and run through Tuesday.

“Baseline” forecasts for e-commerce growth through 2026 “exceed anything seen in the prior six or more years,” reported ABI Research Thursday. It’s projecting global e-commerce revenue will reach $8 trillion in 2026, from $560 billion in 2020, noting the “explosive” growth potential “underscores the need for supply chains to become more flexible and agile to address future disruptions and create more resilient value chains.” The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the weaknesses of “fragmented, regionally dependent, and inflexible supply chains,” said ABI analyst Susan Beardslee. “Even as current challenges subside, new, and potentially unforeseen challenges will become the norm, and companies will need to ensure supply under a more volatile business landscape.”

CTIA announced the launch of its 5G Security Test Bed (STB), which is designed to verify recommendations by the FCC’s Communications Security Reliability and Interoperability Council for 5G networks. It’s based at the University of Maryland, and CTIA, AT&T, Ericsson, T-Mobile, UScellular, Mitre and the school are its founding members, CTIA said Wednesday. “5G is the most secure generation of wireless technology, with enhanced protections built into it from the ground-up,” the group said: “The STB was created to build on this foundation, testing use cases, making recommendations, and further bolstering 5G’s security.” It will start as a 5G network with a 4G core, then change to a stand-alone network.

CTA filed four nearly identical applications Friday to trademark a logo for promoting awareness of consumer radar products and "the importance of such products meeting certain performance standards,” Patent and Trademark Office records show. The proposed trademark consists of the word Ripple, alongside what the applications call a “stylized fish design.” CTA announced Ripple on the opening day of CES 2022 with little fanfare as a new industry standard for radar system development "that will enable hardware and software interoperability for general purpose consumer radar across industrial, automotive and medical applications." A working group formed in 2021 with the participation of Aptiv, Blumio, Ford, Google, Infineon, NXP and Texas Instruments devised the standard to "accelerate the growth of low-power, general purpose radar," said CTA. Ripple's framers envision "a number of possible use cases including non-invasive wellness monitoring, occupancy detection, human activity, and touchless gesture controls," emailed a CTA spokesperson Tuesday. "At this point, we are not planning on having a certification logo for product compliance," he said. The goal of the first release of Ripple's open application programming interface "is to accelerate the growth of applications" by enabling interoperability across various types of radar hardware implementations, he said.

CTA's first in-person CES during the global pandemic drew “well over” 40,000 before the abbreviated show closed Friday after a three-day run, it announced. That's about 23% of the “total verified attendance” at CES 2020, according to that show’s audit report. International visitors made up some 30% of CES 2022's audience, said CTA. Virtually all who commented about low show attendance said they used this to personal advantage, such as enjoying shorter taxi, monorail or concession lines and the ability to engage in deeper conversations with clients, customers and friends they hadn’t seen face to face in two years.

Consumer technology sales will decline 5% this year, after rising 9% in 2021 to $127 billion, said NPD Thursday. The researcher expects declines of 4% in 2023 and 1% in 2024. Near term, NPD expects “slowing demand from the extraordinary rates we have been seeing over the last two years” due to COVID-19 pandemic lifestyle changes, said analyst Stephen Baker.

Smartphone OEMs procured 634 million AMOLED panels globally in 2021, worth $379 billion in revenue, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. Unit volume increased 27% year over year, and revenue was up 22% from 2020, it said. Flexible AMOLED smartphone panels increased by 28% to generate a 56% unit share and a 73% revenue share, said DSCC. The segment dominated due to the expected Q3 and Q4 “lift” from Apple for the iPhone 13 series and more brands launching flexible AMOLED smartphones to focus on premium smartphones in light of chip supply shortages, it said.