Consumers will make increasing use of digital personal assistants to interact with consumer services in the connected home, Gartner said in a Monday report. By 2019, the digital assistants on smartphones and other devices will be the primary interface to connected home services in at least 25 percent of homes in developed economies, said the research firm. “In the not-too-distant future, users will no longer have to contend with multiple apps,” it said. “Instead, they will literally talk to digital personal assistants such as Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa or Google Assistant. Some of these personal assistants are cloud-based and [are] already beginning to leverage smart machine technology."

Twitter is seeking to deepen its machine-learning capabilities after acquiring Magic Pony Technology, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in a Monday blog post announcing the deal. Magic Pony is a London developer of machine-learning techniques for visual processing. The acquired technology “will be used to enhance our strength in live video and opens up a whole lot of exciting creative possibilities for Twitter,” Dorsey said. The deal builds on other recent machine-learning investments for Twitter, including acquisitions of Madbits in July 2014 and Whetlab in June 2015, he said. No terms were disclosed.

The government is seeking proposals to help federal agencies improve their access, interoperability, search or use of their data and data services that would support priorities, including big data, cyber-physical systems, IoT, open access, open data and smart cities, the Department of Commerce's National Technical Information Service (NTIS) said in a recent Federal Register notice. “Finding innovative ways to utilize the federal government’s expansive data resources will provide great opportunities for public-private sector collaboration," said Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker in a Monday news release. "Our [joint venture] business model can dramatically enhance the federal government’s ability to deliver better, more meaningful data anytime and anywhere," said new NTIS Director Avi Bender in the release. The notice cited a 2014 Commerce report that said federal data could guide up to $3.3 trillion in investments annually in the U.S. Proposals from potential JV partners could include: the design, testing, analysis or demonstration of how federal data and data services could be used with nonfederal data; the management of data and data sets; the creation of products, platforms and services based on federal data; or the enhancement of "data discovery and usability, data interoperability and standards, data analytics and forecasting, or data infrastructure and security," the notice said. The NTIS release said the JVs would require investments from partners, but could also be a revenue-sharing opportunity. NTIS scheduled an in-person informational session and webcast July 7. Deadline for proposals is Aug. 1.

The Article 31 Committee, an EU body comprised of member state representatives, meets Monday to discuss the proposed trans-Atlantic data transfer agreement and then again on June 29, a European Commission spokeswoman confirmed in an email. The committee has taken longer than expected to review Privacy Shield, and its opinion does matter in the approval of the pact. It has been heavily criticized by other European entities -- including the Article 29 Working Party, which is comprised of national data protection authorities (see 1604130002), and European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli (see 1605310017) -- for not providing enough protection for EU citizen data and judicial redress for Europeans. Privacy Shield, proposed earlier this year, would replace the 15-year-old safe harbor agreement that was nullified by the European Court of Justice in October. In the meantime, businesses have been relying on other data-transfer mechanisms, including binding corporate rules and model contract clauses, but the latter instrument has come under legal scrutiny (see 1606020018). The EC is expected to approve Privacy Shield if and when the Article 31 Committee signs off on it, but many observers expect the new agreement to be immediately challenged in court.

Global shipments of wearable devices of all types are expected to reach 101.9 million units by the end of 2016, representing 29 percent growth over 2015, IDC said in a Wednesday report. IDC sees the market shipping 213.6 million devices in 2020, based on a 20.3 percent compound annual growth rate. Wrist-based activity trackers will be 50.5 percent of all wearables shipments this year, followed by smartwatches with 41 percent, IDC said. But those metrics will reverse themselves in 2020, when smartwatches will be 52.1 percent of all shipments, compared with only 28.5 percent for activity trackers, it said. “While smartwatches are in the spotlight today, future growth will come from basic watches that provide some sort of fitness/sleep tracking while not being sophisticated enough to run third party applications on the watch itself.” Through their simplicity, “fitness-focused wrist bands have dominated the market thus far,” it said. With big brands like Fitbit continuing to drive sales, “this category will remain influential and accessible,” it said. “However, that dominance will be challenged by watches as many watch vendors incorporate basic fitness features into their products.” Unit shipments of other forms of wearables through the end of the decade are expected to track well below those of smartwatches and fitness trackers, IDC said. For example, smart eyewear will account for fewer than one in every 10 wearable devices shipped in 2020, it said. "All eyes are on this lucrative category" because it will account for more than 40 percent of total wearables market revenue "due to the high prices for specialized commercial devices," it said.

Bluetooth 5, due in the market late this year or early 2017, will include “significantly increased” range, speed, and broadcast messaging capacity, said the Bluetooth SIG Thursday. The next-generation version will quadruple range and double speed of low-energy connections while increasing capacity of connectionless data broadcasts by 800 percent, said the trade group. Extending range will improve IoT reliability connections in home, building and outdoor use cases, it said, and higher speeds will optimize responsiveness. Improving broadcast capacity will spur the next generation of “connectionless” services such as beacons and location-relevant information and navigation, it said. More operating range enables connections to IoT devices "that extend far beyond the walls of a typical home, while increasing speed supports faster data transfers and software updates for devices,” said Bluetooth SIG Executive Director Mark Powell. The boost in broadcast messaging capacity will enable transferred data to be “richer” and “more intelligent,” he said. Bluetooth transmission will move away from the app-paired-to-device model to a connectionless IoT where there's "less need to download an app or connect the app to a device,” Powell said. He forecast Bluetooth will be in more than a third of installed IoT devices by 2020. Some 8.2 billion Bluetooth products are in use today, he said.

Samsung will buy cloud technology services provider Joyent, giving it access to its own cloud platform capable of supporting its lineup of mobile, IoT and cloud-based goods and services, Samsung said in a Thursday announcement. Terms weren’t disclosed, and the deal remains subject to customary closing conditions, Samsung said. As smartphones and connected devices “have taken hold across the world,” cloud computing has become “fundamental in providing users with exciting and reliable services and experiences on their devices,” Samsung said. Joyent’s technology will bolster Samsung’s leadership position in IoT, “while allowing Samsung to scale its own cloud infrastructure and services as it continues to innovate with new software and technologies,” the company said.

A fragmented personal tracking market “with no obvious sales and distribution channels” is causing a shift away from traditional family and pet locator devices, said an ABI report Wednesday. GPS personal tracking device shipments will more than double by 2021 as the market moves instead to elderly/health, corporate and personal asset tracking devices using indoor and outdoor location technology, it said. Although traditional markets “still attract attention,” they’re “being forced to consider new areas to find future growth,” said analyst Patrick Connolly, citing the elderly, dementia patients and remote patient monitoring as target segments. ABI predicts location-based health devices will top 2 million shipments by 2021. Shipments of corporate, industrial and personal asset tracking devices are expected to top 25 million by 2021, said Connolly, led by Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, UWB (ultra wideband), sensor fusion, magnet field, proprietary Wi-Fi and LPWAN (low-power wide area networks).

Citing the damage data breaches could inflict on businesses and consumers, FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen told participants Wednesday at the commission's Start with Security forum in Chicago that it's important to integrate security practices into a company. “So whether you’re building an app or managing your network or choosing your vendors, sound security practices are not an accident," she said. "They begin with a commitment to prioritize security within a business’s culture." Data breaches, she said, can harm a company's financial interests and reputation and result in a loss of consumer confidence. Consumers whose data is stolen can become victims of fraud and identity theft, she said. For instance, 16.6 million people -- U.S. residents 16 years and older -- were victims of identity theft in 2012, mainly credit card fraud, said Ohlhausen, citing the Bureau of Justice Statistics. She also cited the FTC's enforcement approach in making sure that companies have reasonable security practices and protections, and recent actions against AsusTeK Computer, Henry Schein Practice Solutions and Oracle (see 1602230032, 1605230030 and 1603290046). The Chicago workshop, with several panels of security experts providing insights and practical tips for the broader business community, is the fourth over the past year, including stops in Austin, San Francisco and Seattle.

Edge providers like YouTube and Facebook should be a little concerned about parts of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision upholding the FCC net neutrality order (see 1606140023), emailed Anna-Maria Kovacs, visiting senior policy scholar at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. “The logic used by the FCC and upheld by the court has opened the door to subjecting any Internet platform to Title II” of the Communications Act, she wrote Tuesday. “That cannot bode well for those many edge providers that were temporarily exempted by the FCC but can easily be reached once it decides to extend its regulations to them.” The court upheld the FCC decision to reclassify mobile broadband as a common-carrier service, Kovacs said. “The same logic that enabled the FCC to reclassify mobile broadband applies to many edge providers,” she said. “Given the FCC’s arguments and the court’s acceptance of them, can any of the Internet platforms that have myriad users and massive revenues and can potentially be reached by any or all IP endpoints escape classification as telecommunications services? By the FCC’s and court’s logic, how can platforms like Facebook, FaceTime, Vonage, Skype, YouTube, Gmail, or even Uber be anything other than telecommunications services?”