Boost Mobile added the 6.2-inch LG K22 to its smartphone lineup with an online price of $69, it said Tuesday. The 4G phone has a 5-megapixel front camera, 13-megapixel and macro 2-megapixel rear cameras, a 3,000 mAh battery, 2 GB RAM and a quad-core 1.3 GHz processor. Prepaid plans start at $10 per month. Through Jan. 7, Boost Mobile is offering new customers three lines for $90 per month with unlimited talk and text, plus 35 GB LTE data.

Jay Winegard, the legally deaf Queens, New York, resident responsible for filing dozens of Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuits against various enterprises since July 2019, is now targeting CTA in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn with his first known ADA complaint against a trade association. All of Winegard's suits allege inaccessibility to online content through lack of closed captioning or other assistive measures violates the ADA rights of those with hearing disabilities. CTA “excludes the deaf and hard of hearing” from “full and equal participation” in its CES website, CES.tech, in breach of the 1990 statute, said the Christmas Day complaint (in Pacer). Like all of Winegard’s lawsuits, it seeks class-action status on behalf of all people in the U.S. with hearing disabilities. “Without closed captioning deaf and hard-of-hearing people cannot enjoy video content” on CES.tech “while the general public can,” it said. CES.tech qualifies as a “place of public accommodation” that “denies equal access” to the deaf and hearing-impaired under the scope and meaning of the ADA, it said. CTA didn't comment Monday.

Dish Network said it will follow a National Advertising Division recommendation and drop or modify some express and implied claims for its Hopper 3 DVR. NAD said Wednesday AT&T brought the complaint, and while Dish maintained it was comparing only cloud DVRs, many consumers likely would see the comparative claims as also encompassing hardware DVRs. Dish emailed us it "believes in the self-regulatory process and will comply with NAD’s decision," but it is "disappointed that our considerable consumer evidence was completely discounted."

“Save $350 when you register for the all-digital #CES2021 by Jan. 3,” tweeted CTA Wednesday. “Get a front row seat to the latest innovations without ever leaving home.” The $149 CES 2021 registration fee for most attendees rises to $499 starting Jan. 4. CTA said it posted the escalated price to encourage CES attendees to register early because it needs time to qualify applicants as legitimate trade visitors. Late registrations have been an unwanted practice common to virtual trade shows and conferences during the COVID-19 pandemic, said CTA President Gary Shapiro (see 2012170058).

The impact of the U.S. iPhone 12 launch was evident in the Census Bureau’s smartphone import data trends for October, as accessed through the International Trade Commission’s DataWeb tool. Apple’s Oct. 23 release of its first 5G-enabled flagship phone helped send October smartphone unit and dollar import volume soaring. The average October smartphone import was more than a third costlier than in September, though all metrics were noticeably lower than those of a year earlier, as 2020 has been a trying year for the category. U.S. importers sourced 17.49 million smartphones from all countries in October, up 17.2% from September but down 22.5% from October 2019, said DataWeb. October dollar imports spiked 59.3% over September's to $5.21 billion but were 24.1% lower than a year earlier. October smartphone imports were worth $298.43 on average, 36.3% higher than in September but 1.9% below the October 2019 average. China was the obvious beneficiary of the October smartphone import surge, with 83% share of all handsets shipped here in the month, compared with only 70.7% share in September, said DataWeb. Apple is known to be sourcing the iPhone 12 from Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory in China's Henan province. The company, notoriously protective of its proprietary sourcing information, didn’t respond to questions. U.S. importers sourced 14.51 million smartphones from China in October, 37.5% more than in September but 19.1% fewer than in October 2019, said DataWeb. The 104.15 million Chinese smartphones shipped here in the first 10 months were 73.4% of all handset imports to the U.S., slightly lower than its 74.3% share in the same 2019 period. China’s October smartphone import spike took a clear toll on Vietnam, which contributed 13.8% of all handset shipments to the U.S. in the month, down from its 23.9% share in September, said DataWeb. Vietnamese unit import volume of 2.41 million smartphones declined 32.3% from September and was down 35.9% from October 2019. Vietnam shipped just under 29 million smartphones to the U.S. in the year’s first 10 months, 20.4% of all handset imports to the U.S. in the January-to-October period, said DataWeb. The country’s significant stature in the smartphone category will bear watching as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative convenes a Section 301 investigative hearing Dec. 29 into allegations of Vietnamese currency manipulation to the detriment of U.S. commercial interests. The threat of possible tariffs on Vietnamese imports looms prominently over the proceeding. Smartphones from China technically remain exposed to the threat of List 4B Section 301 tariffs still on the books, but the Trump administration postponed the List 4B duties indefinitely after reaching the phase one trade deal with China nearly a year ago (see 2001160022).

Picking a vendor to run the digital platform of the virtual CES 2021, culminating in the October choice of Microsoft (see 2010190043), started with about 60 contenders, CTA President Gary Shapiro told us last week. Among the factors, “we went with Microsoft because they had done their own event,” he said of the Microsoft Ignite all-digital conference that debuted Sept. 22. “We actually signed up and watched it” as part of the evaluation, he said. “Microsoft had so many things we wanted, including a production studio, and they obviously know how to do cybersecurity,” said Shapiro. “There was a lot of chemistry.” The deal includes "things they hadn’t done before” such as show registrations and other CES-centric activities, Shapiro said. “There are other companies that were brought in as subcontractors. It’s a pretty complicated relationship.” Shapiro traveled earlier in December to Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters to do “production work,” he said. “Essentially, we’ve gone from producing a physical event to producing a number of TV shows. It’s totally different for us.” CTA is “able to do things” in the digital domain it never would have considered before, including changing the CES show dates six months out, he said, laughing. CTA originally planned to do the virtual show on the same Jan. 6-10 dates as the canceled physical Las Vegas show before moving to Jan. 11-14.

CES 2021 as an all-virtual event has pre-show registrations “into six figures,” CTA President Gary Shapiro told us Wednesday. A stickler for years for physical CES independent attendance audits, CTA has no methodology for measuring or verifying its such digital participation, he conceded. “The challenge that we’re facing is that we’d love to audit that, but there’s no established auditing procedures for doing who attends. We do have a reputation for honesty that’s well-deserved, and we bolstered it by having an independent audit. The numbers should be clean in terms of what we finally get.” CTA originally planned to do the virtual CES 2021 on the same Jan. 6-10 dates as the canceled physical Las Vegas show before moving it to Jan. 11-14.

Qualcomm introduced SoCs designed to provide flexible and cost-effective options for implementing rich audio over a range of true wireless earbuds, said the company Wednesday. The true wireless earbud category is entering a new era that will bring new use cases and features to products in all tiers, said James Chapman, general manager-voice, music and wearables. Use cases made possible by the new SoC are audio sharing from one smartphone to multiple wireless listeners, voice service support, adaptive active noise cancellation, 96 kHz audio resolution and support for Qualcomm’s aptX Voice and cVc echo cancellation and noise suppression technologies. The QCC305x SoCs will also support the forthcoming Bluetooth Low Energy Audio standard and offer improved connectivity and power optimization, said the company.

Gokhale Method received FCC approval for its PostureTracker, a wearable sensor designed to alleviate back pain. The tracker, which comes with a wireless charging pad based on Energous’ WattUp charging technology, is expected to ship in Q1, Energous announced Tuesday. The two sensors charge simultaneously on the pad.

Q4 industry OLED panel revenue will increase 49% sequentially, reaching an all-time high of nearly $12 billion, projected Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. The iPhone 12's later-than-expected release dates “depressed OLED panel shipment sales in Q3 and accelerated sales in Q4,” said DSCC. Q3 OLED panel revenue totaled $8 billion, down 3.3% from the 2019 quarter, but DSCC’s Q4 OLED revenue forecast of $11.9 billion would be up 46% from Q4 2019. The “pattern” of OLED panel revenue is “heavily weighted by smartphones, by far the largest application” for OLED technology in monetary terms, it said. Q3 OLED smartphone revenue was down 9% from a year earlier with the iPhone launch delay, but a 51% Q4 revenue increase to $9.8 billion is expected.