Rebecca Day

Growth in Harman’s lifestyle and multimedia businesses offset declines in the European infotainment market in fiscal Q3, due to improvements in product mix, said CEO Dinesh Paliwal. The company’s home and multimedia units of the Lifestyle division over the past five to 10 years have been a “loss maker,” or at best turned in low single-digit margins, Paliwal said, but new product designs and architecture changes led to operating margins of 8 percent for the first three quarters, “a record high,” he said.

NAD is trying to bridge the old and the new in a new line of downsized performance-audio music products inspired by the digital music era. The company launched three products in the new Digital Classic Series at a press event in New York Wednesday celebrating the two-channel company’s 41st anniversary with sleek new gear that addresses the needs of the streaming and MP3 world and the “younger demographic that we're mostly missing,” said Greg Stidsen, director-technology and product planning for NAD parent Lenbrook.

Panamax has begun shipping the MD2-ZB SmartPlug ($119.95) and BB-ZB1 BlueBOLT gateway ($99.95) through the custom integrator channel and will extend the line to select Panamax dealers within the next six months, John Benz, director of power and accessories, Core Brands, told Consumer Electronics Daily Tuesday. The devices are part of Panamax’s MD series of products for the custom installation market that provide energy monitoring, individual outlet control, scheduled energy conservation and surge protection. Panamax positions the line as a low-cost way to reduce energy usage and service calls for installers. The smart plug plugs directly into a standard 120V/15A outlet and using ZigBee wireless communications can be monitored, controlled, programmed, and remotely accessed via Panamax/Furman’s cloud-based BlueBOLT energy management and control platform through the wired BB-ZB1 gateway. The smart plug has two discrete AC outlets that can be remotely controlled by installers, Panamax said, saving service calls in situations where a set-top box or other devices require a re-boot. The platform also provides real-time and historical power data, including energy consumption in kilowatt hours per outlet, enabling integrators to schedule conservation periods to cut down on wasted energy and lower utility bills, the company said. Questions about how the consumer versions will differ from the products for the integrator market and which retailers will carry the products weren’t answered by our deadline.

Nuance cited new business/design wins in with mobile customers including Apple, Asus, BlackBerry, DoCoMo, Ford, Fujitsu, GM, Honda, Kyocera, LG, Samsung and TPV The announcement came in an earnings release Tuesday. But the voice technology provider reported a loss of $25.8 million for fiscal Q2 ended March 31. Revenue was up 15.6 percent to $451 million for the period versus Q2 of fiscal 2012, the company said, while cash flow from operations fell to $93.1 million in Q2 2013 from $100.5 million in Q2 fiscal 2012.

The standard six- to eight-year lifecycle of a TV is on a collision course with the two-year lifecycle of the smartphone, NPD DisplaySearch analyst Paul Gray said Monday. Even as prices of TVs come down, consumers aren’t likely to upgrade TVs to be current with the latest connected TV streaming technologies, Gray told Consumer Electronics Daily, and the premium value the industry hoped to attach to the connected TV isn’t likely to carry forth. As consumers live with their connected TVs and smartphones, they'll find after a couple of years “that their connected TVs stop doing things or can’t do any new things,” Gray said. The gap between what’s available on TVs and what consumers can do on their mobile devices will broaden, Gray said. “And then people make a half step and buy an updated set-top box or use something else.”

E-commerce and the iPad have enabled a service that allows TV viewers to shop for products they see on a TV program, said Lisa Farris, CEO of Get*This, which launched an iPad app this month that enables second-screen shopping while a user is watching the ABC drama Scandal. Scandal is the first show to incorporate SmartSync media synchronization technology from Audible Magic, in which the audio signal is matched to an annotated reference set of signatures so the app stays in time with the story line. An app for the iPhone is next up and others will follow, Farris told Consumer Electronics Daily.

Dolby Labs scaled back its full-year revenue forecast at the high end from $950 million to $940 million due to a maturing in the digital cinema conversion cycle and lowered projections of PC revenue following recent market data, said Chief Financial Officer Lewis Chew on the company’s fiscal Q2 earnings call Thursday.

AT&T is rolling out its Digital Life home security and home automation platform Friday in 15 markets with “aggressive” plans to be in 50 markets by year-end, said Kevin Petersen, senior vice president-AT&T Digital Life Services, at a New York media briefing. Launch markets are Atlanta, Austin, Boulder, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Riverside, Calif., San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis and select areas of the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area, the company said.

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 powerhouse smartphone, targeted for delivery this week, is already causing market confusion before release by most carriers. Following online reports of delays in the much-hyped launch of the Samsung Galaxy S4 via Sprint and T-Mobile due to supply problems, Sprint confirmed in a news release Wednesday that it will be “slightly delayed” with its full product launch of the phone due to “unexpected inventory challenges from Samsung.”

The smartphone and tablet are behind Honeywell’s second stab at an Internet-based programmable thermostat, Pat Tessler, director-product marketing, thermostats in Honeywell’s Automation and Control Solutions unit, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Honeywell saw the potential of Internet-based thermostat control as early as 2000 with its Home & Away product but discontinued the line due to limited consumer interest. With only 6 percent of households connected to broadband then, “We were way ahead of the curve,” Tessler said. The dedicated touch screen controller for the system -- originally codenamed Ipad before becoming the WebPAD -- sold for $999, beyond the reach of the average consumer, Tessler said. The iPad and iPhone changed that, putting the burden of the controller on the consumer, leaving just the cost of the hardware for the Wi-Fi-based thermostat. Honeywell’s trio of wireless thermostats includes a $60 model controlled by buttons, a step-up $119 touch screen model and the newest model due out in May ($249) that adds a color-matching feature allowing homeowners to match the background of the display to the room color. A Honeywell app is available from iTunes and Google Play, which enables users to communicate with their heating/cooling system from inside or away from home. Users can change temperature, set up alerts for changes in temperature in the home and view outside temperature and humidity levels, through a licensing agreement with AccuWeather that provides weather data based on ZIP code. A Honeywell advantage, Tessler said, is temperature accuracy within plus or minus one degree, compared with a swing of three or four degrees from competing thermostats, he said. Honeywell sells its do-it-yourself Wi-Fi thermostats through Home Depot and Lowe’s, among other retailers, he said.