Rebecca Day

Reports of lines forming outside Apple stores ahead of Tuesday’s new gadget announcements are overblown, we found in a tour of Apple stores in Manhattan Monday. Stores on 14th Street and in SoHo had no lines and shoppers inside stores were far outnumbered by the number of blue-shirted staffers. At the flagship 59th Street store, we had to ask a store greeter to point out the line of believers, who, according to numerous local news reports, began camping out last week.

Definitive Technology capped an active week in the wireless audio market Friday with the announcement that its Play-Fi-based Wireless Music System will be available for pre-order on Wednesday from the company’s website, at BestBuy.com, Crutchfield.com and FutureShop.ca and available for purchase beginning Oct. 5. The Definitive system uses DTS’s Play-Fi to stream music stored on mobile devices or a PC over Wi-Fi to compatible speakers throughout the home. Definitive listed Pandora and Spotify as early content providers.

Sonos’ announcement earlier this week that a software update allows the company’s music systems to now operate over Wi-Fi -- without a bridge to a router -- has taken on new significance with news Thursday that Harman and Monster have launched competing Wi-Fi-based streaming music products.

Several U.S. wireless carriers jumped on Samsung’s worldwide Galaxy Note 4 announcements Wednesday in hopes of winning new subscribers in the hotly competitive market. Sprint said it will be the only wireless carrier to offer the U.S. version of the Galaxy Note 4 and the Note Edge capable of running on its high-speed Sprint Spark network (http://on.mktw.net/1rMO8SP). Sprint also told customers it will offer the Gear VR virtual reality headset, also launched Wednesday, that’s designed to use the Galaxy Note 4 as the screen.

A week ahead of the anticipated announcement of iPhone 6, China Labor Watch (CLW) and Green America released a report citing “serious health and safety, environmental, and human rights violations” at Catcher, a factory in Suqian, China, that they said manufactures metal iPad covers and other parts for fifth-generation iPhones. During the August investigation, 500-600 workers from Catcher Suqian were transferred to a sister location in Taizhou, China, to work on the iPhone 6, CLW said. Apple told us the plant doesn’t make covers for iPhones, only aluminum enclosures for MacBooks and iPads.

RCA is shipping a fleet of Roku-enabled TVs to BJ’s, Sam’s Club and Walmart, and later this month to Best Buy stores, Pat Deighan, vice president-sales & marketing for ON Corp., the license manufacturer and distributor for the RCA TV brand, told Consumer Electronics Daily Tuesday. The eight models, which come with a Roku Streaming Stick, range from $199 for a 28-inch 720p model to $999 for a 65-inch 1080p, Deighan said.

The Sonos announcement Tuesday that its wireless Bridge is no longer necessary for a Sonos multiroom audio system takes away one marketing salvo Sonos competitors have fired against the wireless music system leader. Companies hoping to take share from Sonos have used easy setup as a way to differentiate from Sonos, which until the latest software update required a bridge connected to a user’s router to establish a proprietary mesh network for the wireless music system to work.

Roughly 30 percent of smart home owners experience monthly glitches with core functions of connected devices, said research presented by Parks Associates in a recent webinar on the impact of the Internet of Things on support services. Examples of snags homeowners have encountered with smart home products include timing issues with automated lighting control, where lights didn’t come on at the programmed times, thermostats that didn’t keep temperatures to programmed levels, and door locks that didn’t perform as expected, said analyst Patrice Samuels. She called the findings “disconcerting” to smart home owners.

Consumers are unfamiliar with the concept of 4K TV, creating a “significant barrier to its uptake,” said a white paper released by Parks Associates Thursday (http://bit.ly/1AXX3Bw). Fewer than 15 percent of U.S. broadband households are familiar with 4K, Parks said, because there’s been little reason to upgrade from their flat-panel TVs. And that’s in an era of shorter replacements cycles, according to Parks, which said the average upgrade cycle for flat-panel HDTVs has narrowed to six to eight years compared with nine to 10 years for traditional CRT TVs. More than 80 percent of U.S. broadband households have a flat-panel TV, it said.

Plantronics continued its march on the consumer headphone market Wednesday with the launch of its first premium model, the $249 BackBeat PRO wireless Bluetooth active noise-canceling headphones. The company’s first full-size headphone is targeted at the mobile professional, Greg Miller, Plantronics’s category director-mobile entertainment solutions, told Consumer Electronics Daily on a press tour in New York Wednesday.