Smart TV, Audio Products to Step Up Roles in '22: Futuresource

Top CE industry trends to watch in 2022 include the growing importance of smart TVs as the center of the connected home lifestyle; the shift toward high-quality, lossless and spatial audio; growing use of immersive audio in vehicles; advances in headphones and wearables; a move to virtual meeting spaces; and renewed interest in augmented reality and virtual reality, said a January Futuresource report.

Supply chain troubles that challenged the market in 2021 will continue “well into 2022,” then begin to ease, said analyst Simon Forrest. Average lead time for chip supply was around 22 weeks for September, double that of October ’20, causing disruption particularly to small- and midsize businesses looking to secure slots for smaller manufacturing runs, he said. The 8% reduction in chip production capacity in 2021 is expected to double to 16% this year as chipmakers recover to more normal supply levels.

Shipping costs average $14,200 per 40-foot container, up from $2,000 before the COVID-19 pandemic, Forrest said. They're dropping from highs of $17,100 per container, but it will take most of 2022 -- “and no further waves of COVID infections” -- before shipping “normality” resumes, he said.

Smart TV makers will continue to push high-end TVs as the central point for control of smart home products and as the interface for cloud gaming platforms in the home, Forrest said. Voice interfaces will be used more as vendors expand opportunities with far-field mics, buoyed by better voice pickup and noise cancellation technologies. Smart TVs could become another smart display in the home, with “always listening” features similar to smart speakers. Futuresource sees 2022 as a year for far-field mic adoption on numerous connected devices.

Though Apple and Amazon gave subscribers "almost overnight” access to high-res audio in their music streaming services last year, products have yet to catch up, Forrest said, noting Apple’s headphones and earbuds don’t support lossless audio, and Amazon’s Music HD service is only available via its apps “with no guarantee that a consumer’s headphones are compatible.”

An upgrade in wireless connectivity is necessary for users to be able to enjoy high-res lossless music, and smart speakers will be upgraded by vendors this year to support the higher quality tracks, he said: “The race is now on to fully deliver on the ‘true’ promises of Hi-Res audio in 2022.” Futuresource expects Apple to release a new chip to support its next generation of products, and other vendors will benefit from Qualcomm’s silicon featuring Bluetooth aptX Lossless. Consumer products will catch up with the capabilities of music streaming services this year, Forrest said.

The spatial audio market is seen growing this year: Amazon’s Echo Studio can play 3D audio tracks encoded in Dolby Atmos or Sony 360 Reality Audio, which Amazon says number over 750 on its HD Music service. Audio will get more personalized via user-tunable hearables and over-the-counter hearing aids, Forrest said.

In the connected car space, some automakers will have a Dolby Atmos option this year. Spatial audio works “exceptionally well” in vehicles, since speaker placement can be optimized for each cabin, Forrest said. With Atmos, front, rear, side and height speakers are positioned around the inside of the car, so passengers can "feel" the movement of whatever they're listening to, Forrest said. That makes for more immersive music playback and enables directional acoustic signaling for notifications and driver warnings: blind-spot detection and unbuckled seatbelt warnings come from the direction of concern, for instance, he said.

Brands will compete on battery life in headsets. Consumers are used to “tens of hours” on most wireless headphones today, but HyperX set a new standard with 300 hours of battery life on a single charge in its Cloud Alpha headset, Forrest said. The analyst cited a rise in domain-specific voice assistants for command and control tasks on headphones and wearables; voice assistants for information requests will require edge computing and cloud AI. He cited a partnership between Knowles and Fluent.ai for offline and app-free AI-powered voice control on true wireless earbuds and hearables.

Videoconferencing technology will improve to lessen awkwardness in the medium, Forrest said. “It’s possible that the regular ‘flat’ audio in conference calls contributes to the phenomenon of Zoom fatigue,” he said. “The human brain is denied the opportunity to use the spatial relationship between speakers, so we must communicate in a different way than we would in a natural in-person setting.” Futuresource sees online meeting platforms integrating spatial audio tech this year, so direction of voices matches the physical positioning of video feeds onscreen.

Virtual meeting spaces are expected to advance. Microsoft announced plans to integrate elements of its Mesh mixed reality platform into Microsoft Teams this half, allowing participants to use avatars. Meta released an open beta called Horizon Workrooms, a collaboration tool for teams in remote working environments that provides virtual meeting rooms, whiteboards and video call integration.