Smartphones will account for two of three mobile connections globally by 2020, said the GSM Association of mobile operators in a study released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1nOleL5). The study said smartphones account for one of every three mobile connections today, or more than 2 billion mobile connections. It forecast smartphone connections will grow threefold over the next six years, reaching 6 billion by 2020, to two-thirds of the 9 billion mobile connections by that time. Basic phones, feature phones and data terminals such as tablets, dongles and routers will be the remainder, it said. “The smartphone has sparked a wave of global innovation that has brought new services to millions and efficiencies to businesses of every type,” it said. “Smartphones will be the driving force of mobile industry growth over the next six years, with 1 billion new smartphone connections expected over the next 18 months.” Emerging markets overtook the “developed world” in terms of smartphone connections three years ago and today account for two of every three smartphones on the planet, the new study said. It predicted that by 2020, four of five smartphone connections worldwide will come from the developing world. China led the world with 629.2 million smartphone connections at the end of Q2, followed by the U.S. (196.8 million connections), Brazil (141.8 million), India (111 million) and Indonesia (95 million). In many developed markets, smartphone penetration is approaching the 80 percent “ceiling” at which growth tends to slow, the study said. Smartphone adoption is forecast to reach 75 percent in Europe and North America by 2020, though smartphone growth in these two regions has slowed in recent years, it said. Smartphone connections grew 35 percent in North America and 39 percent in Europe between 2010 and 2013, compared with growth rates higher than 80 percent during that same period in Asia Pacific and Latin America, it said.

Congress needs to craft a “national consumer protection plan" to keep pay-TV subscribers safe, TVFreedom said in a blog post Thursday. TVFreedom is a broadcaster coalition that has NAB as a member. Legislation implementing such a plan would better define the roles of federal regulators “that can aid consumers and address existing market failures in the video marketplace,” TVFreedom said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1uKqGTe). “Today, government oversight of the cable and satellite TV industry is under the jurisdictions of states and local franchising authorities, which has resulted in significant variations in state-by-state government oversight.” The plan “should be guided under the principles that consumer satisfaction is top priority, and that consumers must be empowered with the tools necessary to address recurring billing errors, ’surprise’ charges and inferior service quality,” TVFreedom said.

Satellite operator SES will team with Samsung and Swiss pay TV provider SmarDTV at the IBC2014 show in Amsterdam to mount the world’s first demonstration of Ultra HD content being beamed live from an SES satellite to a TV using central authentication service (CAS) encryption and a standard SmarDTV CI Plus decryption module, the companies said Thursday in a news release. The demo is the first time that a full 3840 x 2160-pixel CAS-protected Ultra HD signal in HEVC will be decrypted by a standard SmarDTV CI Plus Module and rendered on a Samsung Ultra HD TV, they said. “This opens the door for pay-TV service providers to directly access the new Ultra HD sets that are being rapidly adopted by consumers around the world.” The Ultra HD content will be broadcast live from an SES satellite at 19.2 degrees east using the DVB consortium’s “UHD Phase 1” signaling specs, they said. The IBC2014 exhibition floor opens Friday for a five-day run.

Broadcom’s BCM7445 system on a chip will power TiVo’s Ultra HD set-top box technology, which will be demonstrated at the IBC2014 show in Amsterdam, said Broadcom and TiVo Thursday. “Demonstrating our 4K capabilities with Broadcom at IBC marks an important next step in our bringing Ultra HD to consumers everywhere,” TiVo said. TiVo representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment about the company’s Ultra HD marketing plans.

Expect Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba’s IPO valuation to top $150 billion, said financial analysts in interviews Thursday. There isn’t another e-commerce company that could receive Alibaba’s valuation, said David Menlow, IPOfinancial.com president, who said the IPO is scheduled for Sept. 19. The valuation will probably be about $160 billion, a conservative opening given the company’s market share in China, said Henry Guo, a JG Capital analyst who follows China’s Internet sector. Guo expects Alibaba’s value to balloon to $230 billion or $240 billion over the next year. Alibaba will focus on the Chinese market in the short term, but is likely to be “aggressive” in international markets in the coming years, he said. One concern with the IPO is how the company will handle the Chinese government’s stringent banking policies (Alibaba also hosts financial transactions), but CEO Jack Ma probably has the best relationship with the Chinese government of any private-sector individual in the country, Guo said. Yahoo, a major Alibaba shareholder, will likely use some of its IPO earnings to invest in emerging technologies, including mobile, he said. Alibaba will expand to the U.S., said Menlow. He said Ma isn’t going to be “happy with business as usual, it’s going to be business as unusual."

The House unanimously approved the E-Label Act (HR-5161) Thursday under suspension of the rules. “Not only will this give manufacturers greater flexibility to design innovative products that consumers demand, but by some estimates e-labeling will save manufacturers over $80 million per year,” said House Communications Subcommittee Vice Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, in a statement. “E-labeling can expand consumer access to relevant device information, and enhance the overall quality and availability of equipment identification records through supporting software.” House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., touted House passage of the E-Label Act and earlier this week, the Anti-Spoofing Act (HR-3670), as part of the committee’s record of success. The House “voted to protect consumers and relieve the regulatory burden on electronics manufacturers,” Upton said in a statement.

The Apple Watch is “not as beautiful” as had been expected and “there’s something about it that smells of compromise,” Paul Gray, DisplaySearch director of European research, emailed us Thursday of Apple’s first wearables introduction (CED Sept 10 p1). Perhaps “that’s the price to pay for the screen and functionality, but Moto 360 doesn’t feel that way,” Gray said of the Motorola Android Wear smart watch that sells for $249, about $100 less than the projected price of the Apple Watch when it goes on sale to the public in early 2015. Wandering the IFA show in Berlin and watching German consumers exploring the various wearable products on display, most seemed to be “gravitating to round devices,” Gray said. LG’s G Watch, which bowed with a rectangular face and since has debuted in a round version called the G Watch R, was an “interesting” case in point, he said. “There were queues for the round one, while the rectangular version attracted much less interest. I think LG has done a great job with G Watch R, and perhaps signifies a breakthrough in that they have made an object of desire by design, not simply technology.” Gray’s first impressions of the Apple Watch are that it “doesn’t feel that high-tech,” he said. Samsung’s curved-edge OLED phone display “was the sort of styling cue I had expected from Apple,” he said. Gray is left-handed and wears his watch on his right wrist, so he thinks it will be “impossible” to for him to use the Apple Watch’s “Digital Crown” stem if he wears the watch on his right wrist, he said. “Possibly it can be worn upside down, but otherwise Apple’s fabled usability has just failed 10 percent of the population” that’s left-handed, he said. Wearables are a different animal from iPhones, where Apple has been dominant for years, Gray said. “Wearable devices are expected to express far more of the owner’s personality and taste” than iPhones do, he said. “There is no one-fits-all solution, giving an interesting market dynamic. Apple may need to spawn a family on the same platform with numerous form-factors.” Gray’s bottom-line take is that Apple may sell millions of Apple Watches, but “it feels likely to me that their accessible share of the pie is low, simply because a large slice of the population simply wants something different,” he said: “The diversity in the market makes it most likely to be a battle of platforms (iOS v. Android Wear) rather than devices. In fact, this could be a really diverse market, completely unlike most CE types. Swatch, Casio and Rolex compete in the sense that they make watches, but in reality they address totally different markets and consumers.” Apple representatives didn’t immediately comment.

CEA hailed House passage of HR-5057, which would amend the Energy Policy and Conservation Act to permit exemptions for external power supplies (EPS) from certain federal energy-efficiency standards. CEA supported a national energy efficiency standard for EPSs as part of the 2007 energy act, and the Department of Energy has since revised the standard, said Doug Johnson, CEA vice president-technology policy (http://bit.ly/1oy5mw1). HR-5057 “recognizes the need for replacement chargers for use with products manufactured before the effective date of DOE’s latest regulation,” Johnson said Thursday. “The bill will facilitate warranty and contract compliance by manufacturers, as well as manufacturer compliance with state parts retention laws. As we support this technical amendment, we also remain hopeful that Congress will pass broader energy efficiency legislation."

NAB is gearing up to “go head-to-head with the record labels at the Copyright Royalty Board over digital performance rights, said NAB CEO Gordon Smith at the opening of the 2014 NAB Radio Show Wednesday. NAB is working to convince the CRB “that they should set the rate at a level that encourages broadcasters to stream,” when the rates are reset in 2015, Smith said. NAB is also weighing in at the FCC on the possible expansion of online public file requirements, he said. “NAB has explained to the Commission that it is likely to be much more difficult, especially for small radio stations, to upload and continually update the public file.” Broadcasters should be “bullish” about the future of radio, Smith said. No other medium has broadcasting’s connection to local communities, Smith said. He said NAB’s support of an app that provides FM radio over smartphones -- called NextRadio -- is part of the association’s effort to provide a future for radio. NAB Labs is also testing the “all-digital mode of iBiquity’s AM digital radio system,” Smith said. “We have now conducted field tests of this system at seven different stations and are conducting lab testing as well.” The results are “encouraging,” Smith said Wednesday, according to prepared remarks released by the association (http://bit.ly/1lYwIjJ).

Most Americans who use wearable activity trackers or mobile apps make it a practice to share their personal health and wellness data with others, but they also crave “personalized feedback” on their data and are willing to pay for it, especially from a “trusted health expert,” such as a doctor, nutritionist or fitness trainer, said the findings of a Harris Poll done for the website Wellocracy (http://bit.ly/1uIW0BE). Harris canvassed 2,060 U.S. adults online in late April, and found 467 of them had used a wearable activity tracker or smartphone or tablet app in the past 12 months, it said. Of those, 72 percent reported sharing their personal health data with family, a health professional, friends, colleagues and social media, it said. “Consumers are embracing personal connected health technologies but want more than just charts and graphs showing how many steps they've walked, calories they've consumed or hours of deep sleep they got last night,” said Wellocracy. “They crave expert guidance, feedback on their personal health data and the knowledge that someone who cares is watching and encouraging their progress. We believe in the value of wearable devices and apps, but if they are going to be more than a passing fad, we need to include personalized motivation and feedback mechanisms to keep individuals engaged."