Rebecca Day

Skyworth is making a “big push” into OLED TV in the U.S. this year, John Homlish, senior vice president-sales and marketing, told Consumer Electronics Daily Wednesday. The company has been producing TVs with LG Display for the China market since 2013 and now wants to bring its own prowess -- taking raw panels and adding its Chameleon Extreme processor and Google’s Android TV 10 platform -- to bring what Homlish called Tier 1 technology to the U.S. market.

COVID-19 led to renewed validation of legacy telephony technologies as voice calls “address the universal need for communication and social connection, providing a lifeline for everyday life, work, and relationships,” said a Tuesday Parks Associates white paper.

Logitech’s Q3 sales growth -- more than the total growth for the past three years combined -- rode work-at-home and spectator gaming trends, said CEO Bracken Darrell on the company’s Tuesday call. Sales soared 85% year on year to $1.67 billion. Operating income jumped 248% to $448 million in the quarter ended Dec. 31.

Consumers’ concerns about privacy and security are “adding friction” to sales of smart home products, said Brad Ree, chief technology officer of the ioXt Alliance, on a panel last week at Parks Associates’ Connections summit, a CES partner program. Over a third of consumers who don’t intend to buy a smart home product list privacy and security concerns as the top reason, said Parks analyst Patrice Samuels.

November-December holiday sales sailed past National Retail Federation forecasts, soaring an “unexpectedly high” 8.3% over the 2019 period, despite COVID-19 challenges, reported the trade group Friday. Total U.S. retail sales for the period were $789.4 billion, including e-commerce and physical store sales. NRF had forecast a 3.6%-5.2% bump to between $755.3 billion and $766.7 billion.

It’s a “burden” on do-it-yourself smart home consumers to have to know and understand the various smart home protocols, said Raya Sevilla, ADT senior vice president-product, at Parks Associates’ Thursday virtual Connections conference, a partner program to CES.

Aggressive trade-in and switcher offers accompanied the rollout of Samsung’s much-anticipated Galaxy S21 series 5G smartphones Thursday, led by the 6.8-inch flagship Galaxy S21 Ultra with a 120 Hz AMOLED display. The S21 Ultra is the first phone to be compatible with Samsung’s S pen, allowing users to draw, take notes, edit photos and sign documents on the phone screen.

All of TCL’s 2021 6-Series quantum dot Roku TVs will be 8K models, said Aaron Dew, director-product development, TCL North America, on the company’s Tuesday prerecorded media conference geared to the U.S. and Canada markets. The 6-Series is “the best balance of high-performance display technology and accessible package for mainstream TV shoppers,” rather than “bleeding-edge display technologies” found in the flagship Mini-LED TVs, said Dew.

Webcams became an unexpected product scarcity resulting from a computer trickle-down phenomenon during the pandemic, said Best Buy CEO Corie Barry on a Tuesday CES keynote. Home office shortages abounded when families suddenly began looking for computing solutions at home when work- and school-from-home mandates took effect last spring, she said.

Pitching a “better normal for all,” Samsung highlighted artificial intelligence, MicroLED displays, robots and sustainability at its prerecorded CES 2021 news conference Monday.