Yantouch introduced a “3-in-1” Bluetooth speaker that also includes an LED smart light and alarm feature. The $149 device offers colors that can be set to pulse with music, and sleep and wake natural-light settings that simulate sunset and sunrise, it said Tuesday. The Diamond+Bluetooth speaker is positioned as an “all-in-one entertainment system” for camping and outdoor parties.

Sixty percent of U.S. consumers expect to have experienced a house that speaks or reads to them by 2025, said a study on the impact of technology commissioned by Intel’s McAfee. Seventy-seven percent of consumers think the most common device in 11 years will be a smart watch, and 70 percent believe overall wearable devices will be common personal accessories. Seventy-two percent of consumers expect connected kitchen appliances will be a household item by 2015, six in 10 expect their refrigerators to automatically add food to a running grocery list when items are running low, and 84 percent believe their home security systems will be connected to their mobile devices, McAfee said. Almost 70 percent of respondents expressed concern over the state of cybersecurity in 2025, with identity theft, monetary theft and fraud the leading issues. By 2025, 38 percent of U.S. consumers expect to unlock their mobile device by eye scan followed by a thumbprint, McAfee said. On mobile pay, a third of consumers believe they'll be able to pay for items using their fingerprint, while 22 percent expected to use their mobile device. Twenty-six percent of respondents said they planned to still pay by credit or debit card. The online survey was done Aug. 1-12 by MSI Research among 1,507 U.S. citizens ages 21-65, split evenly by age and gender.

Global smartphone shipments will approach 1.2 billion units this year, up 19 percent from 2013, Juniper Research said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1wnNdGq). Growth in emerging markets on the “continued surge” in sales of “economy” and “ultra-economy” smartphones priced under $75 will drive much of the increase, it said. “While Apple and Samsung continue to dominate the ultra-premium end of the market, these vendors are facing significant pressure from local players in the emerging markets,” it said. “These new players are beginning to build market share and achieve larger economies of scale, which eventually will enable them to expand their offering and challenge other smartphone sectors in the future.” Still, Apple and Samsung will have nearly 45 percent of the smartphones shipped globally this year, it said.

Sennheiser formally asked the FCC to reconsider parts of its incentive auction report and order on wireless mics. As of June 2010, companies had to take all 700 MHz mics out of service and replace them with devices that use 600 MHz spectrum, the company said in a filing in docket 12-268, not yet posted by the FCC. “Now, if the 600 MHz spectrum auction and TV band repacking proceed as planned, microphone users will lose most of their remaining spectrum,” Sennheiser said. A proposal to allow continued operations in the 600 MHz guard bands won’t make up for the loss, Sennheiser said. “The guard bands are likely to receive out-of-band emissions from neighboring operations and to have power limits inconsistent with some uses of wireless microphones,” the company said. “Moreover, a performer’s ear monitors require frequencies separated from those for the microphone, resulting in a need for two distinct bands in UHF.” Sennheiser asked the FCC to “revisit its policies so as to make adequate UHF spectrum available.” Several options are available, including reserving “naturally occurring” vacant channels and Channel 37 for wireless microphones, “or setting aside additional spectrum from that to be auctioned,” the company said. The FCC should also require auction winners to pay the cost to move mics to other frequencies, Sennheiser said: “The Commission has recognized elsewhere the inequity of leaving incumbents to bear their own costs of relocating to a different band for the sole benefit of auction winners.” The German company said wireless mics are vital to the U.S. economy. “Wireless microphones are ubiquitous in all aspects of the entertainment business, in news reporting, in sports, and in U.S. commercial, civic, and religious life,” Sennheiser said. “They are essential to the production of virtually all non-studio broadcast events, and to nearly all studio-produced programs as well.”

Following Control4’s buy of driver developer Fresh Vegetables last week (CED Sept 12 p1), another Fresh Vegetable customer, Universal Remote Control (URC), told us by email that Control4’s buyout “was made without any warning or discussion with URC or most importantly, the dealers and customers.” Cat Toomey, marketing director, said URC’s business philosophy “has always been to support the custom industry and dealer community as a whole -- and that means any dealers, past, present or future. URC would never abandon our dealers and their end customers, and we never will,” she said. “To cut off dealers and end customers that have purchased software in good faith is clearly not in the best interests of the industry we all hold in very high regard.” URC will deliver its own modules “for the few that Extra Vegetables provided,” Toomey said. Some of those modules are public application programming interfaces, and for others, “we'll escalate anything necessary in the best interests of our dealers and their customers,” she said. URC has more than 75 two-way driver modules “in play now and more coming,” she said. At CEDIA Expo, the company announced URC-supported two-way modules for companies including DSC (Digital Security Control), Lutron Caseta, Nest and Vantage, Toomey said. URC will be the first company to deliver control modules for Denon’s HEOS system, and in an apparent dig aimed at Control4, Toomey said: “We do not rely on tiny third-party developers.” URC works with Sonos, she said, and the SNP-2 streaming network player URC just began shipping “amplified our launch and opportunities for our dealers on the music source front,” she said. URC’s module development program has been “in full swing for years” and will continue to be part of its offerings for dealers and their customers, Toomey said.

Sprint said the LG G3 Vigor will be available Friday using the company’s Easy Pay plan under which qualified buyers can buy the smartphone with no money down and 24 monthly payments of $12.50, plus a service plan. The 5-inch phone has an IPS (in-plane switching) display, Android 4.4.2 and a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor, Sprint said Monday. The phone is enabled for Sprint Spark and Wi-Fi calling, the carrier said.

The CEDIA Technology Council advised integrator members about issues resulting from the impending iOS upgrade and customer transitions to iPhone 6 and 6 Plus smartphones. It warned dealers to contact clients and tell them not to upgrade any iOS product serving as a primary control device without speaking to the dealer first so they can evaluate the impact of the update on installed systems. The council urged them to use the contact call as an opportunity to recommend backup and verification services for devices. The addition of Touch ID in the phones was designed to boost security by requiring a two-factor authentication process with a biometric sensor, also included in iPhone 5s. The rollout of new application programming interfaces along with the authentication process will “open up huge opportunities” for integrators as they deploy customized mobile apps in AV and control system designs using Apple’s HomeKit, HealthKit, CloudKit and WatchKit development platforms, the council said. The addition of Wi-Fi calling in iPhone 6, providing a seamless hand-off between a home’s Wi-Fi network and carrier networks, could place additional burdens on the home network, it said. The new iPhone 6 models also have support for 802.11ac, which creates opportunities for network upgrades, it said.

Google is asking the FCC to allow it to do drone tests in New Mexico, consulting engineer Steven Crowley said in a blog post, citing a Sept. 12 filing by Google (http://bit.ly/1y81ITo). Crowley said key details were redacted from the filing, but Google proposes to use 910 MHz and 2.4 GHz spectrum, which is otherwise open for unlicensed use. “We don’t know what Google is doing with these bands, but Google says the 2400 MHz antenna is oriented such that vertical peak gain is 20 degrees below the horizon,” he wrote (http://bit.ly/1ph1wqz). “Similarly, the 910 MHz antenna is oriented 5-90 degrees above the ground plane. This suggests the higher band is for a drone-to-ground link, and the lower band is for ground-to-drone.”

Panasonic continued to channel the holiday season Monday, following Black Friday in August sales with Cyber September deals in promotional emails to customers. The company is offering two new deals daily, warning of “limited quantities.” Monday’s offers included a 58-inch 4K Ultra HD TV, sold exclusively at Panasonic’s online store, at $2,199, what it called a $1,600 discount. Panasonic sweetened the deal with a free DMP-BDT360 4K Blu-ray player valued at $139, the price for the player in Best Buy stores Monday. At Best Buy, meanwhile, 55-inch 4K TVs from Vizio were selling for $1,399, LG for $1,499 and Samsung for $1,599 Monday. Samsung curved Smart 4K TVs in 55 inches came in at $2,499 and $3,299, we found. A 60-inch Samsung 3D 4K TV priced out at $2,799, according to the website.

Panasonic announced a firmware update for its Lumix DMC-FZ1000 camera that includes a mode for extracting a 4K photo from video. Panasonic said its 4K Photo Mode offers “hybrid photography,” which it said makes it easier for consumers to capture “spur-of-the-moment” shots in 4K by cropping out a designated portion from 4K video. In 4K Photo Mode, the recording format, picture quality setting and brightness are automatically set to the optimum parameters for photo shooting, Panasonic said Monday. Users can record video in 16:9, 4:3, 3:2 or 1:1 aspect ratios and also deliver an 8-megapixel still image, it said. The firmware upgrade also adds 4K video recording in MP4 and AAC, the company said.