CEDIA will observe its 25th anniversary at its September Expo in Denver. The association plans an anniversary celebration as part of the Expo, giving special recognition to founding members, it said. CEDIA has grown “from just a small group of 50 visionaries to more than 3,500 professional member companies, representing 22,000 professionals,” said Don Gilpin, executive director.

The White House plans to nominate Danny Marti as U.S. intellectual property enforcement coordinator were generally welcomed in statements issued Thursday and Friday after the announcement. Marti is managing partner of the Kilpatrick Townsend firm, it said. “We ... hope for speedy confirmation,” said Mitch Glazier, RIAA senior executive vice president, in a statement Thursday. “We ... urge Congress to move quickly to confirm his nomination to this important position,” said Kim Harris, NBCUniversal general counsel. “Danny’s impressive record of commitment to enforcing IP rights in the Internet age makes him a particularly strong choice,” said MPAA CEO Chris Dodd (http://bit.ly/1zRsPxO). NCTA looks forward to working with Marti, it said (http://bit.ly/Z0k3lS). So does the Information Technology Industry Council, said CEO Dean Garfield (http://bit.ly/VVr0lY).

Sprint launched another version of the HTC One Friday. The HTC One E8, available in white or gray, is offered with Sprint Easy Pay, which allows qualified customers to buy the phone for $0 down with 24 monthly payments of $20.84. Features include Android 4.4.2, a 5-inch display, 2.3 GHz processor, 13-megapixel front and 5-megapixel rear cameras, Wi-Fi Calling and HD Voice. The phone can be a 3G/4G hotspot, Sprint said.

With speculation building toward Apple’s Sept. 9 announcement that the iPhone 6 will have sapphire cover glass, uBreakiFix, a smartphone and tech repair company, ran a series of drop tests to determine sapphire’s durability, the company said. It found that though sapphire is “remarkably hard,” it’s also “remarkably stiff” and “quite brittle,” it said. Its bottom line: “This brittleness may equate to broken screens. Sapphire may not be the indestructible cure-all that many have claimed it is.” In one trial, uBreakiFix said, it drop-tested a Kyocera Brigadier smartphone, which has a sapphire display, and found the sapphire screen remained intact when dropped from as high as 6 feet because the phone’s raised perimeter bezel protects the screen. When the display assembly was removed from the phone and dropped on its own, the screen cracked with a drop from only 3 feet, it said. “Our conclusion is that sapphire alone will not equate to an unbreakable iPhone,” it said, though hedging. “We can’t say if an iPhone 6 with a sapphire screen will be more or less durable overall. Clever engineering and protective features may still create a very durable device regardless of the use of sapphire.” GT Advanced Technologies, the Boston-area company that reportedly is supplying Apple with sapphire cover glass for the iPhone 6, didn’t comment immediately.

Hisense is sponsoring Lotus F1 for Grand Prix races in Italy, the U.S. and Abu Dhabi through the rest of the year, with cars sporting the Hisense logo on the side pod and air box of the Lotus E22 race car, the companies said Thursday. Lan Lin, Hisense vice president, said the company plans to use “proven partnerships that can deliver” as a way to grow brand awareness globally. Sports marketing is key to Hisense’s worldwide brand awareness strategy, it said, saying the company also recently sponsored German football club, FC Schalke 04.

Pioneer and Sharp will “dissolve” their “capital alliance” after seven years (CED Sept 24/07 p1), though they'll continue running their “business alliance” through a five-year-old joint venture that combined their optical disc businesses (CED April 10/09 p3), they said Thursday. “Both companies have decided to dissolve the capital alliance as they have achieved the goals of the alliance, whose aim was to closely oversee the business alliance,” they said.

Consumer Electronics Daily won’t be published Monday, Sept. 1 in observance of the federal Labor Day holiday. Our next issue will be dated Tuesday, Sept. 2.

Koss, which has never quite recovered from the $34 million embezzlement scheme that landed its former vice president of finance an 11-year prison sentence four years ago (CED Nov 19/10 p2), has suspended its production operations in Mexico “until sales volumes support enough demand for the products being produced there,” the company said in an 8-K SEC filing Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1qD6djs). Lackluster export sales caused “extremely disappointing” results for the year ended June 30, when the company had a $5.6 million net loss vs. a year-earlier $5.4 million net profit, on sales that plunged 33.3 percent to $23.8 million, the company said. “Increased competition in our industry has played a role in the setback, but we believe the severe reduction in 2014 export sales was also driven by certain economic challenges, struggling economies, and available credit for retailers and distributors.” Koss still has faith in the “viability” of its high-end Striva headphone technology, “but has temporarily suspended its research and development effort in this area until our base business is restored to more profitable levels,” it said. Koss has billed its two Striva models as the world’s first “true” Wi-Fi headphones, but the models were very expensive at $450 and $500. A check of the Koss online store Thursday showed both models were out of stock.

The voluntary agreement two years ago between CE makers, the pay-TV industry and green advocates like the Natural Resources Defense Council on energy standards for set-top boxes (CED July 24/12 p6) has saved U.S. consumers around $168 million on energy bills and 842,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, said NCTA in a blog post Thursday (http://bit.ly/1lyFTXV). The information on energy saved comes from an annual report (http://bit.ly/1tP3svy) on the impact of the agreement by an independent administrator hired by the agreement’s participants, said a CEA news release on the report. Under the agreement, 85 percent of set-tops bought by pay-TV providers in 2013 met the EPA’s Energy Star 3.0 efficiency levels, using 14 percent less energy than previous models, NCTA said. The agreement has also led to software updates being deployed to enable light sleep for set-tops already in homes, an auto power-down feature in 90 percent of direct broadcast satellite boxes and energy efficiency information being posted by pay-TV providers for all new boxes, NCTA said. The more efficient boxes “save consumers money on their electric bill, reduce pollution, and work even better than the old ones used to,” said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the NRDC.

The IEEE Standards Association plans an Internet of Things workshop Sept. 18-19 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, to “provide an open, engaging platform to discuss opportunities, impacts and challenges around the convergence” of IoT technologies, the group said Thursday (http://bit.ly/1pMY3oH). A “special focus” at the workshop will be on the need for “more interdisciplinary approaches to the design of products and services for IoT markets,” it said. “From smart cities to smart homes to eHealth to cleaner transportation, standardization in IoT will provide economic opportunity to these areas and many more by increasing interoperability and fueling the economy of scale,” it said. The group “is one of the driving forces behind IoT standardization and will continue to contribute to the advancing of IoT by participating and hosting of IoT workshops, events and projects,” it said.