Connectivity Tops Feature List of Products at DigitalFocus Event

Connected devices dominated the scene of CE gadgets at Pepcom’s DigitalFocus event in New York Thursday night as the annual mini trade event ushered in the dads and grads shopping season. Against a backdrop of The Graduate showing on a super-sized projection screen, exhibitors displayed a range of devices for personal use and home applications geared for the mid-year gift-giving season.

Cobra Electronics, which has established its reputation largely with CB radios and radar detectors, is expanding into mobile Bluetooth speakers, Christopher Kooistra, director-marketing services, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Kooistra called the expansion a “natural fit” for the company’s mobile electronics line and existing Bluetooth products. Bluetooth audio products include the AirWave 360 speaker designed to fit in a vehicle’s cup holder; the AirWave Box, which acts as a wireless bridge allowing consumers to send audio from a smartphone via Bluetooth to older car stereo systems; and the AirWave Mini, a ruggedized, water-resistant palm-sized speaker designed for outdoor use. The AirWave 360 is controllable by gestures to minimize driver distraction in a car, Kooistra said. All three products have a $129 list price, he said.

Also new from Cobra is the JumPack, a $129 portable charger that enables users to power multiple devices simultaneously. The JumPack, which features 200-Amp starting current, 400-Amp peak current, a 2.1-Amp USB output and a 7500-milliamp-hour lithium-cobalt battery, can be used to jump start “most” vehicles or to power smartphones and accessories, he said. JumPack is due to ship in May.

Martian Watches introduced a $129 Bluetooth smart watch, the Notifier, that will begin selling at Best Buy in early June, said President Stanley Kinsey. Amid a competitive landscape featuring some 25 smart watches, the Notifier focuses on tactile alerts rather than “trying to replicate what’s on your phone,” Kinsey said. The Notifier line has three core designs, all based around an analog clock face with “quick-release” watch bands that users can replace themselves with $19.99 accessory bands available in seven colors.

Martian’s peg is that consumers want “an analog watch that’s smart,” Kinsey said, adding that research shows 90 percent of the value of a smart watch is “notification.” The Notifier watches come pre-populated with app notification selection settings for apps such as Facebook and email. Users can opt into notifications for each app and then assign custom vibration sequences to each app so that the watch buzzes the wearer when push messages arrive at their smartphone rather than requiring the user to visually monitor the watch. An incoming Facebook notification on a user’s smartphone triggers a specific vibration sequence, for instance, while calendar, text, weather or sports score notifications can trigger their own specific codes, said Kinsey. The watches also have a single-line OLED display that shows incoming callers, alerts or texts. Users can scroll back 10 messages on the watch at a given time, said Kinsey.

Connected doorbell company DoorBot showed a downsized version of its $199 video doorbell that’s been in the market for over a year. Customer feedback indicated consumers wanted a less obtrusive device on the front of their home, so engineers combined speakers into a single enclosure and reduced the overall footprint of the device by 33 percent, Brand Manager Yassi Shahmiri told us. Shahmiri said the hybrid is being sold at Staples as part of the retailer’s Connect home control platform. But according to the Staples website, the device isn’t compatible with Staples Connect. DoorBot has four reviews on Staples.com, all rating the product with one star (out of a possible five) for issues including slow and unreliable performance, poor audio and video and unresponsive customer service.

At Intel, microprocessors conforming to the company’s mandate to support conflict-free mineral production are shipping, said a spokeswoman. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in his CES keynote address that the company would not sell any chips that incorporate conflict minerals in 2014. Materials such as gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten are used in the manufacturing of phones, tablets and cars, and the minerals used to make these metals often originate in the Democratic Republic of Congo “where violent militias and rebel groups control their trade, exploiting workers, and financing violence,” Intel said. Intel is reaching out to college students with the initiative to create awareness and promote legitimate mining of essential minerals, said the company spokeswoman. Intel is working with partners to eliminate conflict minerals from its supply chain, it said.

LG showcased several mobile devices, including the G Flex smartphone that it shipped in Q1 in the U.S., following its introduction in Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore late last year. The G Flex, which LG touted as the “world’s first curved, flexible” smartphone, has been selling stronger than expected, spokesman Chaz Abbott said Thursday. Sales data, however, weren’t provided. The device is being sold by AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, as well as Best Buy, in the U.S., said Abbott.

Best Buy exhibited at the event to highlight products that may be popular for the busy spring gifting season, said spokesman Jeremy Baier. Some of the products it showed were items exclusive or partially exclusive to Best Buy, including the gold edition of the HTC One M8 smartphone, he said. The Zepp Labs motion sensor that it showed will be available only via Best Buy and Apple, he said. Zepp is fielding motion sensors that can be attached to any baseball or softball bat, tennis racket or golf glove. Each sensor contains an ARM processor that can capture 1,000 data points per second and then transfer all the data to a user’s iOS or Android smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth, Zepp said in a news release. The sensor works in conjunction with apps for the mobile devices.

Consumer demand is strong for HTC’s M8 at Best Buy’s midtown Manhattan store on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street, said Catalina Varsalona, Best Buy sales leader-connectivity. That phone and the Samsung Galaxy S5 that went on sale Friday each feature upgrades to Android’s KitKat operating system that many consumers have been waiting for, she said. There were strong pre-orders for both phones before their releases, but store demand has been even stronger for the S5 than the M8, she said. Many Galaxy S4 owners are looking to upgrade to the S5 and many customers are trading in their old phones to get an S5, she said.

The store has also been seeing strong demand for Mophie’s Juice Pack charging cases for iPhones and the S4, as well as Bose and Beats headphones, said Varsalona. Demand for Beats is the strongest among all headphone brands, but the store is also seeing strong demand for Bose’s FreeStyle in-ear and SoundTrue on-ear headphones, she said. Microsoft’s Surface Pro 2 and Lenovo Yoga Windows-based convertible laptops/tablets have also been popular, she said. Demand for the Surface Pro 2 has been stronger than the earlier Surface device, likely because Microsoft “fixed a lot of the bugs,” she said. Although not spotlighted by Best Buy Thursday, the iPad Air has continued to be in strong demand since its launch, as have iPads with Retina displays in general, she said.

Many consumers trade in tablets at Varsalona’s store, although those customers often use the store credit from those trade-ins for products other than just tablets, she said. In comparison, customers trading in smartphones typically use the store credit for newer smartphones, she said. Customers typically wait two to three years to upgrade their tablets, while many customers are looking to upgrade their smartphones faster, she said. Although customers have historically been locked into their smartphones due to two-year contracts, a growing number of smartphones are being offered by carriers now at affordable prices without contracts, she said. That will likely lead to customers upgrading their smartphones even faster than in the past, she predicted.

Singtrix again touted the home karaoke system that it introduced at the Engadget Expand conference in New York in the fall (CED Nov 12 p11). The product is still being sold only at its website in the U.S., but Singtrix started talking to “all major” U.S. retailers as it looks to bring the system to retail by the holiday season, CEO John Devecka told us Thursday. The company, however, is looking to have its system sold at only one to three U.S. retailers this year, he said. The earliest the system will make it to U.S. retailers will probably be the summer, he said. Singtrix is also gearing up for global market expansion of the system, it said.

It’s a “big stretch for a small company” like Singtrix, which has only three full-time employees now, said Devecka. Singtrix will sell the product directly online in Europe and also has started talks with distribution partners for that region so that it can also be sold at retail there, he said. It expects to also sell the system in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the Middle East via distribution, he said. But the system won’t be sold directly in Australia and New Zealand, just via distribution, he said.

Singtrix sold “tens of thousands” of systems to date in the U.S., it said. The company has taken in “millions of dollars” in sales from the system and will be profitable this year, thanks in part to its “very low overhead,” said Devecka. But the company expects to hire 5-10 more employees this year to handle functions including sales and customer support, he said.

Supplies are still “limited” on the Singtrix system, and that will continue to be the case as production ramps up for additional markets, said Devecka. The system is being manufactured by an unspecified company in China, he said. Although Singtrix initially fielded a bundle at about $300, the company is, for now, just selling a Singtrix Party Bundle Limited Edition SKU at its website for $345 in the U.S. “Inventory is limited as production ramps up” on the SKU and the “current shipping window is 5-10 days,” it said at the site. The bundle includes several extras valued at $150, including a Mega Pack featuring 300-plus factory installed presets, a second microphone and a microphone stand mounted tablet holder for iPads, it said. Singtrix didn’t say how long it will field the limited edition bundle instead of the older SKU or if it will field multiple SKUs at retail.

Devices that D-Link showed Thursday night included the $179.99 Wi-Fi Baby Camera (DCS-825L) that it said is being sold by retailers including Amazon, BestBuy.com, Target.com and Walmart.com in the U.S. The manufacturer is also trying to get the product sold at Babies R Us and other baby product retail stores, said a spokesman.