LAS VEGAS -- The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) extended its certification program to software applications, President Nidhish Parikh, told us at CES. By extending certification to apps, the alliance can expand the reach of the “DLNA ecosystem,” Parikh said, not only with new devices but also by bringing legacy devices that aren’t DLNA-certified into the fold. Those can include PCs that are software upgradable, he said, but most notable are iPhone and iPad devices that Apple has chosen not to put through DLNA certification. DLNA was formed in 2003 to develop an interoperability platform for digital devices based on open and established industry standards that support media sharing over wired or wireless networks.

The United States Patent Office issued a record 219,614 utility patents in 2010, a 31 percent increase from 2009, said an annual report released Monday by IFI Claims Patent Services. It’s the largest annual increase on record, IFI said.

LAS VEGAS -- Kenwood achieved top three market share for 2010 among U.S. car electronics companies in all five major 12-volt product categories, said Keith Lehmann, senior vice president of Kenwood U.S.A., at a CES news conference Friday. A year ago at CES, he said Kenwood was the only manufacturer with a top-five market share in 2009 for all five categories, and it was the third straight year it achieved that (CED Jan 12 p2). The categories were multimedia, in-dash navigation, in-dash CD receivers, amps and speakers.

Set-top boxes deployed in the U.S. consume about 27 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year, equal to the annual energy output of nine coal-fired power plants, the Natural Resources Defense Council said, citing its own research. This energy use costs consumers $3 billion a year, and results in about 16 million metric tons of CO2 emissions, the group said in comments on the EPA’s final draft of revised specifications for cable, satellite and IPTV set-top boxes.

Systemax will install Tiger Connect sections to all CompUSA/TigerDirect stores, seeking to expand sales of mobile devices with cellphone services for the first time, said Lonny Paul, vice president of marketing and strategic initiatives.

Toshiba’s 2011 3D TVs feature a scaled-down version of its Cell processor technology shorn of its ability to handle six 1080p video streams simultaneously, but retaining 2D/3D conversion and image scaling, said Scott Ramirez, vice president of product and marketing for TV and digital AV.

LAS VEGAS -- Mobile video products won’t attract viewers without some form of free content, panelists at CES said late Thursday. Viewers want to have the same experience on their handsets as they have in the living room, and that includes free access to some of their favorite programming, said Diane Jovin, vice president of corporate marketing and business development for Telegent Systems, a mobile TV chipmaker. “Subscription fees can work for premium content, but it needs to be bundled with other types of content,” she said. The lack of free content is part of what doomed Qualcomm’s MediaFLO service, panelists said.

LAS VEGAS - Tablet devices are poised to become “our most personal computers” in a transition that will be akin to the switch from mainframe to personal computers, said Mike Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia’s mobile business unit. During each such transition over computing’s history, the amount of people using the devices has increased by an order of magnitude or more, he told a CES panel discussion on disruptive technologies. “We're going to look back in a few years and find that a large part of the world’s population did their first computing on a smartphone or a tablet device.” New high-powered smartphones have the same specifications a top-of-the-line notebook PC had a few years ago, he said. “It’s beyond disruptive,” he said. “It’s one of those half-dozen events in the computing industry that we'll all look back and are excited to be a part of."

LAS VEGAS -- The cloud-based, on-demand OnLive Game Service “will be inside other TVs” and other devices later this year, in addition to the Vizio TVs, Via tablet, Via smartphone and Blu-ray players that were announced last week at CES, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman told us. It was too soon, however, to name other manufacturer partners or provide product timetables, he said. “Every manufacturer moves [at] a different pace,” but we're just “seeing the tip of a very big iceberg” now, he said.

CEA is leading an effort to develop a “national, industry-wide” electronics recycling program that will “ensure all parties involved are held to high industry practices, accountability and standards,” the group said in its sustainability report. This “exciting initiative” will be launched in 2011, the group said without giving details. The program is still under development, a spokeswoman for the group said.