With cybersecurity a growing threat to both connected and autonomous vehicles, Karamba Security announced security software for the connected car Tuesday that “seals” a vehicle’s electronic control units (ECUs) by automatically creating security policies based on factory settings. Karamba’s Carwall detects and prevents anything not explicitly allowed to load or run on an ECU in real time, including in-memory attacks, said the company. The software enables car manufacturers to "immediately address security bugs in existing or new code and eliminate an attacker’s way into a connected car,” said CEO Ami Dotan.
In a forecast update Wednesday, IDC cut 2016 worldwide smartphone shipment projections by 2.6 percentage points due to a “continued slowdown in mature markets and China.” IDC now projects smartphone shipments to rise 3.1 percent this year, compared with 10.5 percent growth in 2015 and 27.8 percent in 2014. Smartphone shipments will reach 1.48 billion this year and 1.84 billion in 2020, said IDC. It expects large markets -- the U.S., Western Europe and China -- to have low single-digit growth rates this year. "Consumers everywhere are getting savvy about how and where they buy their smartphones, and this is opening up new doors for OEMs and causing some traditional channels to lose some control of the hardware flow," said analyst Ryan Reith. Apple smartphone shipments are on track to experience their first annual decline in 2016.
Qualcomm launched an SoC for wearables Tuesday, at Computex 2016 in Taipei. Features include a power save mode, modem with LTE/3G global band support and integrated applications processor for Linux-based applications that can scale to support voice, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, said the company. Target applications include watches for the “connected kid” and elderly, said Qualcomm, which is collaborating with Aricent, Borqs, Infomark and SurfaceInk with Wear 1100. Qualcomm unveiled a dual-band Wi-Fi chip, with low power, small size and security features designed for connected devices. Qualcomm’s QCA401x features software support for Apple's HomeKit, Google's Weave and the AllSeen Alliance's AllJoyn software framework to help address IoT fragmentation, Qualcomm said. The company also launched a family of tri-radio 802.11ac platforms aimed at boosting home network capacity and optimizing for better consumer Wi-Fi experiences. As connected homes add devices, “Wi-Fi is being stretched to the limit," said Gopi Sirineni, vice president-product management at Qualcomm Atheros.
BURLINGAME, California -- Skinny bundles, widening over-the-top video options, millennials’ viewing patterns and the future of personalized TV factor into the hazy future for pay TV, said panelists at the OTT and Transformation of Pay TV session at Parks Associates’ Connections conference last week.
BURLINGAME, California -- A panel on privacy and security in the IoT could have been renamed “What keeps the IoT awake at night?” said Parks Associates analyst Brad Russell, introducing the session at the company's conference. After each publicized “high-level hacking” or widespread personal data breach, people responsible for data security “become a little bit more sleep-deprived,” Russell said. For those who aren’t, “maybe you should be,” he said Tuesday. Panelists also said governments have a role in security. Earlier, a Comcast executive spoke about the company's growth in its home security segment.
Google was taking email addresses Wednesday from those seeking more information on its answer to Amazon’s Echo -- Google Home -- due out later this year. But Google didn’t offer price or availability for the multitasking speaker it launched at the Google I/O event in Mountain View, California. Google described the Wi-Fi device as “a voice-activated home product that allows you and your family to get answers from Google, stream music, and manage everyday tasks.”
Microsoft’s announcement it is selling its feature phone business to Hon Hai/Foxconn subsidiary FIH Mobile and HMD global Oy (HMD) for $350 million “highlights Microsoft’s continued failure in mobile,” IHS emailed in a research note Wednesday. While Microsoft said in its Wednesday news release it would continue to develop the Windows 10 Mobile platform and support Lumia phones and phones from OEM partners such as Acer, Alcatel, HP, Trinity and Vaio, IHS called Microsoft’s smartphone future “up in the air.”
Consumer electronics buying group ProSource formed a committee of vendors, members and a consultant company led by Savant founder Jim Carroll to explore how the buying group will participate in IoT, ProSource CEO David Workman told us at the group’s spring meeting here in Dana Point, California. It’s the first time ProSource has created a committee that involves vendor partners and select dealer members, Workman said. The group, meeting for the first time in Dana Point, will “try to decide and establish which direction this is all going,” Workman said of the IoT market. “It’s just a stew right now of a bunch of ideas for product and different versions of the truth. We want to progress but do so cautiously and carefully trying to understand how the market is going to develop,” he said. The intriguing unknown for ProSource and industry watchers is how Amazon’s Alexa voice engine and the Echo devices fit into the home automation picture. “The Echo has been a revelation and is generating a huge amount of ongoing interest,” NPD analyst Stephen Baker told us. At some point, that interest will accelerate into “lots of other kinds of individual products,” he said.
On his first earnings call since his return to the helm at Pandora, CEO/Founder Tim Westergren envisioned a thriving music economy “actually coming true,” with the company surviving “when almost no one did.” The company’s strategic position, based on personalization, “is not obvious to the outside world,” he said. “You have to look under the hood.”
Apple’s adoption of Dolby Digital Plus “should kick start the [Dolby] Mobile business,” which was down 2 percent year-over-year in Q2, said Dougherty & Co. analyst Steven Frankel in a research note Thursday. Frankel sees “ample room for upside” in its estimates for FY 2017 and beyond, calling the new kinship between the companies an “important evolution in the long-standing relationship.” Dolby shares closed 13 percent higher Thursday at $47.91.