Sony Semiconductor Solutions of America created a lip-reading technology designed to take voice recognition in vehicles “to the next level,” said Mark Hanson, vice president-technology and business innovation, at a CES 2021 media virtual briefing Tuesday. “Voice recognition continues to be one of the most reported complaints of new vehicle owners,” said Hanson. “Cars are dynamic and noisy” in conditions where audio voice recognition “is challenged,” he said. “The goal we gave the engineering team was to make voice recognition work in a convertible, figuring it they could make it work there, they could make it work in any environment.” Sony’s “current focus” is to support the company’s Vision-S electric car initiative, which could “help people with hearing impairment,” said Hanson. The technology supports more than 200 “command words” in English, he said. “We plan to expand both the word count and language support, prioritized on the needs of our customers.”

TCL is dropping the price of a 5G smartphone to 299 euros ($363.88) for the TCL 20 5G, which is selling in some European markets before a broader rollout, a CES news conference was told Monday. The 6.67-inch phone has a 48-megapixel triple camera and 4,500 milliamp-hour battery, said Tiago Abreu, head of design innovation at TCL’s X-Lab. The 20 SE is TCL’s least expensive phone, a 6.82-inch 4G model with quad camera and high-resolution audio, at 149 euros ($181.12). It will introduce three more phones, including another 5G model, later in the year. TCL will roll out its first Google TVs in LED, 8K and QLED TVs this year, starting in the U.S., Abreu said. Google Assistant will be integrated in the Google TVs, which can also be voice-controlled by Amazon Alexa for customers with an Amazon Echo product. TCL is unveiling two tablets targeted to education, remote learning and productivity applications. More details are here.

PC sales were “on fire" in Q4, rising 26.1% globally from Q4 2019 to reach 91.6 million units, reported IDC Monday. Sales grew 13.1% for the full year, with remote work and learning the main “catalysts,” it said. “Every segment of the supply chain was stretched to its limits as production once again lagged behind demand during the quarter." The last time the market had such big annual growth was 2010, when sales rose 13.7% year over year, it said. The time since has had six years of PC market decline, it said: All signs indicate the surge “has a way to go." Lenovo, HP and Dell remain the top three brands, followed by Apple and Acer.

Worldwide shipments of used smartphones rose 9% to 225.4 million last year, reported IDC Thursday. It estimated a 6.4% drop for new phones. IDC predicts used smartphone shipments will reach 351.6 million in 2024 -- market value of $65 billion -- growing about 11% yearly. The used smartphone category is led by mature markets, where trade-ins act as a subsidy to push consumers upgrades, it noted, citing “rapid growth” in trade-in programs and average selling prices over the past year. Flagship phones rely heavily on trade-in programs to make upfront costs more affordable, said the research firm, referencing Apple, Samsung and Huawei’s “aggressive” trade-in offers. Carriers use trade-ins combined with bundled plans to spur upgrades, it noted. "In contrast to the recent declines in the new smartphone market, as well as the forecast for minimal growth in new shipments over the next few years, the used market for smartphones shows no signs of slowing," said analyst Anthony Scarsella.

BitRouter is entering the ATSC 3.0 consumer market with its ZapperBox set-top box, President-Founder Gopal Miglani told a Pearl TV NextGenTV media briefing virtually Thursday. The company plans a “slow ramp-up” to be sure “everything’s working” and “consumers are happy,” said Miglani. BitRouter also will sell the ZapperBox through resellers and will approach OEMs “who want to white-label the product,” he said. It also will license the software to OEMs that want to design their own boxes, he said. LG expects more 3.0 rollout this year (see 2101070061).

The wireless power market is expected to reach $29.23 billion by 2027, Powercast said. It and Energous are among wireless charger makers unveiling new products this week (see also here).

The iPhone 12 series was 76% of U.S. iPhone sales in the four weeks following the Nov. 13 release date for the series' flagship iPhone 12 and 12 Pro, reported Consumer Intelligence Research Partners Tuesday. The $699 iPhone 12 mini was the underachiever, having been “lost among the other models,” said CIRP co-founder Josh Lowitz. The mini “likely disappointed Apple with only 6% of sales,” said co-founder Mike Levin, noting the 5.4-inch model has most of the features as the other iPhone 12 models, in a smaller form. Share of the 12 mini was just above that of iPhone XR, which launched in 2018 and is now priced at $499; the one-year-old iPhone 11, now selling for $599; and the second-generation iPhone SE, launched in April at $399. Sales were fairly evenly distributed among the 12, 12 Pro and 12 Max, CIRP said. It surveyed 243 consumers November-December.

5G was built into two-thirds of AMOLED smartphones shipped in Q4 and 47% in all of 2020, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. Q3 AMOLED smartphone panel shipments fell year over year for the second straight quarter due to weakened demand from the pandemic and delays in Apple’s iPhone 12 launch, said DSCC. But Q4 was expected to have been a record quarter for AMOLED smartphone panels by “wide margins,” it said. Apple’s all-OLED launch in the flagship iPhone 12 lineup was responsible for most of the Q4 upswing in AMOLED smartphone panel shipments, said DSCC.

Global semiconductor sales increased 7% in November from a year earlier, up 1.1% sequentially, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association. It was the largest year-on-year monthly increase since March, said CEO John Neuffer. Sales for 2020 were tracking “well ahead of the total from 2019, despite substantial headwinds caused by the pandemic and other macroeconomic factors,” he said. Sales into the Americas jumped 12.5% from a year earlier in November, the 11th-straight month of double-digit increases, he said.

5G smartphones, “the most accelerated mobile technology generation ever launched,” could reach sub-$200 price points in 2021, causing challenges for the industry, said ABI Research analyst David McQueen in a 2021 trend forecast Tuesday. 5G’s fast adoption brings a “raft of technical challenges” that may lead to substantial changes in mobile device design, McQueen said. Availability of 5G smartphone models will become more diverse, “brought to market quickly at a wide variety of price points, democratizing the 5G experience,” said the analyst. A “seismic shift to lower price tiers” will be the main growth driver for accelerated 5G adoption, made possible by affordable chipsets from Qualcomm, MediaTek and Unisoc, said McQueen. That will leave a “squeezed” high end of 5G smartphones, he said. Smartphone replacement cycles could benefit short term, but the fast-tracked migration of 5G to lower-tier phones could have a domino effect on average selling prices and overall profitability. “It would be of little surprise if 2021 saw 5G smartphones fall below the $200 mark, driven by the availability of cheaper components and pricing policies of chipset vendors,” said the analyst. 5G will have positive and negative impact on the environment, said analyst Jun Wei Ee. The synergy between 5G and artificial intelligence and the IoT could mean lower energy consumption and increased efficiencies in operations long term, but energy consumption could also increase tremendously in the 5G world as the higher speeds encourage more usage among consumers and applications, he said. Accelerated adoption also will lead to large amounts of electronic waste, said the analyst. He urged operators and manufacturers to do more to encourage recycling and use of recycled materials in their 5G efforts. Geopolitical trade wars left their mark on the smartphone market, with Huawei at the center, said McQueen. Huawei is a market leader, with about 20% global share, but it's “struggling to stay in the market in the longer term and rebuild its now tainted brand outside of China,” McQueen said. A diminished Huawei would leave a void that current smartphone vendors would rush to fill, McQueen said, citing Apple, Samsung, Google, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus. It could also enable resurrection of “once-notable” smartphone brands including LG, Motorola, Nokia-HMD and Sony, he said. Ultra-wideband (UWB) will be ubiquitous in 2021, said ABI. Increased adoption will result from wider chipset availability, adoption across multiple segments and a “healthy UWB ecosystem across the entire supply chain,” said analyst Andrew Zignani.