The location-based services (LBS) market is forecast to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 22 percent through 2019, research firm TechNavio said. Driving the LBS market are friend finders, maps and check-in applications adopted by individual consumers, it said. On the enterprise side, companies are deploying LBS for advertising, search, tracking, navigation and analytics, it said. Some 72 percent of all emergency calls are made using mobile phones, said Faisal Ghaus, vice president, TechNavio. Tracing the accurate location of the caller is a challenge, however, he said. LBS platforms can be used to track where a call is coming from by providing real-time information on the location of the caller “in a short time span,” he said.

Senior citizens are using new technology and online tools more regularly, said tech industry and online service experts during a panel at the White House Conference on Aging Monday. Representatives from companies such as Peapod and Uber said they are surprised at how many elderly citizens use their respective products. Tom Parkinson, Peapod chief technology officer, said the reason for the expanded use of the Internet-based services among the elderly is that they are beginning to focus on what the technology is allowing them to do, rather than the technology itself. An Uber representative told the audience it would begin working with two senior centers in Gainesville, Florida, to provide free and reduced-price rides and to educate the members of the centers on the technology used to access Uber. A representative from the company also said it has begun launching the senior citizen focused initiatives in several cities across the U.S. One of the problems that the older generation faces when attempting to use new technology appears when they can't see the results of the technology, such as when using cloud services, said Chuck Wallace, associate computer science professor at Michigan Technological University. Wallace said that even though more elderly members of society are embracing technology, it becomes hard for them to grasp when it they can no longer see it or readily access it.

Cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab coined the term “digital amnesia” to describe the phenomenon of forgetting information that Americans trust a digital device to store and remember for them, the company said Wednesday in a report. That the phenomenon is so prevalent points up the need for Americans to adequately protect their devices with “readily available IT security products,” but protection of the sort that Kaspersky and others sell is lacking, the report said. Kaspersky canvassed 1,000 U.S. consumers aged 16 to 55 online in May and found that 91 percent “can easily admit their dependency on the Internet and devices as a tool for remembering and an extension of their brain,” it said. And 44 percent said their smartphone holds almost everything they need to know or recall. “Not surprisingly, the study also found that the loss or compromise of data stored on digital devices, and smartphones in particular, would leave many users devastated,” the company said. But in the study, 28 percent admitted they don’t protect any of their devices with “additional security,” it said. The firm said it found just one in three installs extra IT security on a smartphone, one in five on a tablet.

Worldwide IT spending will decline 5.5 percent in 2015, though in constant-currency terms the market is projected to grow 2.5 percent to $3.5 trillion, Gartner predicted Tuesday in a forecast report. Gartner previously projected that IT spending would decline 1.3 percent during 2015 and would grow 3.1 percent in constant currency. Communications services will continue to dominate IT spending through the end of the year, with expenditures in that segment to total almost $1.5 trillion, Gartner said. Spending on IT services will total $914 billion, while device spending will total $654 billion, Gartner said. “We want to stress that this is not a market crash,” said Gartner Vice President-Research John-David Lovelock in a statement. “Such are the illusions that large swings in the value of the U.S. dollar versus other currencies can create.” However, “vendors do have to raise prices to protect costs and margins of their products, and enterprises and consumers will have to make new purchase decisions in light of the new prices,” Lovelock said.

Pay-TV operators bought $15.3 billion worth of set-top boxes last year, a decline of $600 million, the first contraction in the STB market since 2002, said IHS Monday. Shipments of pay-TV STBs inched ahead nearly 1 percent during the period to 204.7 million units, but the modest shipment growth “failed to compensate for the effects of price erosion” in the competitive market, said IHS. Pay-TV STB vendors had a “great run” since 2002 on growth in pay TV, cable digitization mandates, DVRs, HDTV and IPTV, said Daniel Simmons, IHS head-connected home research. “The industry is now at an inflection point.” Mature pay-TV markets are saturated with “high-value, advanced boxes," setting up shipment declines there, while operators in emerging markets “aren’t transitioning to advanced boxes fast enough to increase overall industry value,” he said. Consolidations in the first half of the year foreshadowed a declining market, said IHS, with South Korean STB vendor Woojeon & Handan exiting the market and Swiss vendor Advanced Digital Broadcast delisted from the SIX Swiss Exchange. TiVo and U.K.-based Amino have acquired pay-TV software companies, while market leader Arris announced plans to acquire Pace, it said. IHS predicts the market will shrink further this year, to $15.1 billion, and will continue dropping to $13.2 billion in 2018 before stabilizing in 2019. Industry value will decline “across nearly all segments,” except for satellite pay-TV STBs, said IHS. Most satellite operators aren't ISPs, “so they cannot virtualize traditional STB functionality, such as DVR, into the cloud as readily,” said Simmons. Satellite operators will need to invest in STB hardware to enable advanced services that can compete with those offered by cable and IPTV operators, he said. Continued pay-TV growth in Africa and the Middle East, as well as in South and Central America, also will provide STB opportunities over the forecast period, said IHS.

The market for in-building wireless services is expected to balloon to $16.71 billion by 2020, said research released Friday by MarketsandMarkets. The market currently is $4.83 billion, but the report suggests an increased reliance on mobile data will initiate more demand for in-building wireless services, causing an annual compounded growth rate of 28.1 percent.

"There are no easy answers" to closing the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told a Women in Consumer Electronics event in New York. But she said Tuesday that companies in STEM industries need to collect more data on their workforce demographics. "What we have seen," she said in prepared remarks released Wednesday, "is a stunningly less diverse workforce than the population as a whole. These numbers are not what we want them to be. But collecting data is a start." Rosenworcel also said women need to start taking it upon themselves to bring more women to the industry and should show more support to women in economic and civic life. "That's how we start the process of changing a world where talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not," she said.

Samsung HDTV sets ranked highest in customer satisfaction among 3,750 consumers canvassed in May who had bought an HDTV set in the past 12 months, J.D. Power said Thursday in a report. “Regardless of the size of the HDTV they purchase, shoppers focus on finding value,” the research firm said. Among customers who recently bought an HDTV set, 69 percent of those with a set smaller than 50 inches and 63 percent of those with sets larger than 50 inches cited price as the main reason for their selection, it said. Samsung ranked highest in the 50-inch or larger HDTV segment with a score of 871 out of 1,000, it said. Samsung also ranked highest in sets smaller than 50 inches with a score of 856, it said. Seven criteria are factored into the scores, including performance, reliability, features, price, ease of use, product design and warranty, it said.

TCL is expanding into South and Southeast Asia as part of a broader expansion of international operations, said CEO Li Dongsheng at the China-South Asia Expo in Shenzhen, China, Monday. TCL will set up production facilities in Yunnan, China, “in the near future” as it moves into South and Southeast Asia, said Li. From there, TCL plans to move into the larger international market by leveraging geography and favorable national policies including China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, said Li. China plans to build the starting point of four rail lines in Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, and TCL’s Kunming-based production facilities could be a base of support to penetrate related markets through Yunnan, he said. India also is a “major focus” of TCL’s globalization strategy, said the company.

While app usage has transitioned from a novelty to an essential part of the mobile user experience, the number of apps used is staying the same, said a Nielsen study. Millions of apps are available, with more rolled out every day, but more than 70 percent of total app usage is coming from the top 200 apps, said Nielsen. App developers and marketers need to position apps effectively to stand out in an increasingly competitive market, it said. While there’s an app for “everyone, regardless of age, race or interest,” consumers have shown a threshold for the number of apps they use actively per month, it said. On average, smartphone users accessed 26.7 apps per month in Q4, roughly flat with Q4 2012. But the time they spend engaging with those apps has increased by 14 minutes per month, Nielsen said. Average time per month spent on apps per person has grown from 23:02 (hours and minutes) in Q4 2012 to 37:28 in Q4 2014, said Nielsen. The entertainment category -- covering a broad swath of content from weather forecasts to sports scores -- has contributed to the increase in app usage, driving a 13 percent year-on-year increase in Q4, as users spent nearly three hours more on apps during the period, Nielsen said. On smartphones, gaming is the biggest subcategory, with 76 percent of entertainment app users (115 million) reporting they played at least one game in Q4, followed by music and then movies/videos. Men’s monthly app usage averaged 27.2 versus 26.3 for women, but women spend more time per app at 38:02 minutes versus 36:51 for men, it said. African-Americans use the most apps per month (30.3) and spend nearly 43 hours per month on them, while Hispanics follow at 41:31 across an average 27.9 apps per month, it said. Asian-Americans average 37:14 per month on apps, while white non-Hispanic users spend 35:25 per month, it said.