Rebecca Day

Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Nook Color e-readers “do not infringe any valid claim” of patents cited by Microsoft in its March 21 patent infringement lawsuit (CED March 22 p10) against the company, Barnes & Noble said in a countersuit filed in United States District Court in Seattle this week. Microsoft’s allegations, which also named device suppliers Hon Hai Precision Industry, Foxconn International Holdings and Inventec, “appear to center on the Nook’s and Nook Color’s use of the Android operating system,” although they “do not cover, claim, or disclose the Android operating system,” Barnes & Noble said.

The two “Sony Tablet” models that will debut this fall (CED April 27 p10) will be designed with an “intuitive gripping” feature that makes them “comfortable to hold and use for long periods of time,” Sony Electronics spokeswoman Linda Barger told us by email. But she declined comment on the tablets’ specs, pricing and marketing details. “Everything that we can disclose is in the press release,” Barger said. “Sony has not announced pricing, which regions they will be sold in, where apps will be available or details about the remote access feature.” Sony’s announcement said users, through at least one of the tablets, the “S1,” can control home entertainment devices and enjoy content “in new ways.” The S1 will use infrared technology and work as a universal remote for “a variety” of AV devices, such as Bravia TVs, Sony said. DLNA functionality also will let users “throw” personal content to large-screen TVs or music to wireless speakers, it said. But Barger wouldn’t answer when we asked if the remote access feature will work only with Sony products or even with all Sony connected devices in the home.

PHOENIX -- As video margins slice into specialty AV dealers’ earnings, audio is looking better and better as a profit source, Home Technology Specialists Association members told us at their spring meeting. Although some sources said it was “like returning to their roots,” it’s new music sources that are driving the interest in high-performance audio. Streaming services such as Pandora, Rhapsody, Napster and Amazon’s cloud-based service are bringing customers to stores to learn more about the offerings and, in many cases, to get help in setting up systems for use around the home.

PHOENIX -- Home Technology Specialists of America (HTSA) dealers came to the buying group’s spring conference this week facing a variety of challenges from thin video margins to potential product shortages resulting from supply chain disruptions after the Japan quake, members told us Tuesday. Product availability is a major concern at Lee Hartman & Sons in Roanoke, Va., sales manager John Cosgrove told us, saying some vendors have said it will be “difficult to get product in consistently” over the course of the year. “They're telling us, ’so-and-so in Japan can’t get in a part for a board,’ and that’s throwing everything off,” he said. Cosgrove wouldn’t name suppliers but said bulletins are starting to come in about products being one of three things: “discontinued, highly constrained or forget-about-it,” he said.

Smartphones and tablets are driving growth for iNAND flash memory and microSD cards, Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of SanDisk, said on the company’s Q1 earnings call. “The smartphone market remains as vibrant as ever,” he said, citing analysts’ forecasts of 250 new models launching this year. OEM tablet activity “remains strong” and SanDisk is seeing requests for 16 gigabyte-and-higher capacities for embedded tablet solutions, he said.

IHS iSuppli said it dropped its forecast for Apple iPad 2 shipments based on reports of manufacturing kinks, including LCD panel quality concerns and end-unit production shortfalls. The hitches caused IHS to downshift its sales forecasts for all 2011 iPad models by 9.1 percent to 39.7 million units, from the February forecast of 43.7 million.

After a five-month sales and marketing hiatus, Colorado vNet is planning to launch three products in Q2, Russound CEO Charlie Porritt told Consumer Electronics Daily during a press tour in Manhattan Thursday. Porritt confirmed it will deliver a media streamer using Autonomic Controls’ technology (CED April 19 p4) as part of a 2011 new product trio that will be available to dealers in the next 60 days.

Logitech, which claims a 97 percent share of the 5.1-channel multimedia speaker market, continues to blur the lines between computer and home entertainment audio. The company is replacing its Z500W 5.1-channel surround-sound speaker system with a digitally driven model due in stores at the end of the month, regional product manager Alan Smith told us at a media briefing Tuesday in New York.

Sonos said it added support for Apple AirPlay and introduced a free application for Android mobile phones that’s available from Android Market. AirPlay support enables Sonos users to play songs stored on an iPhone or iPad wirelessly over the Sonos system. Users were able to stream music in the past from a PC on the Sonos network, or from the cloud, but they couldn’t take a song straight off the iPhone or an iPad and play it around the house.

Supply chain consolidation could have a stabilizing effect on hard-disk drive pricing, NPD analyst Stephen Baker told us Tuesday, following storage company Seagate’s announcement early Tuesday that Samsung was buying 9.6 percent of the company. “The HDD market requires economies of scale and this segment has been consolidating for a few years,” Baker said. The Samsung-Seagate agreement followed by a month Western Digital’s announcement that it’s buying Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $4.3 billion.