The “continuous 5G migration in more regions” will be a big 2022 growth driver for MediaTek, the largest smartphone SoC maker, CEO Rick Tsai told a Q4 call Thursday. MediaTek expects global 5G smartphone penetration to exceed 50% of handsets this year, he said. The 5G penetration rate in China is the highest at 80%, and “we expect 5G unit growth to mainly come from other regions,” he said. With MediaTek’s “early readiness” of 5G modems for Wi-Fi 6E, “we have been able to penetrate the notebook market successfully,” said Tsai. Its partnerships with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices “helped us build a strong designing pipeline with all major global OEMs,” he said. MediaTek estimates more than 2 billion devices sold globally in 2021, including smartphones, smart TVs, notebooks and tablets, used MediaTek, said Tsai. It forecasts its total addressable market will grow to $140 billion in 2024 from $80 billion in 2021, he said.

Energous received regulatory approval for its 1W WattUp PowerBridge transmitter from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, the wireless charging company said Wednesday. In addition to sending power, WattUp PowerBridge transmitters can be a data link for connected IoT devices such as sensors, electronic shelf labels, trackers, IoT tags and batteryless devices, the company said.

Commerce’s Sept. 24 request for information into the global semiconductor shortage (see 2109230038) found semiconductor demand “continues to far outstrip supply,” reported the department Tuesday. “Median demand for chips highlighted by buyers was as much as 17% higher in 2021 than 2019, and buyers aren’t seeing commensurate increases in the supply.” Secretary Gina Raimondo blogged that it's “essential that Congress move swiftly” to pass the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. The median inventory of semiconductor products highlighted by buyers fell to fewer than five days in 2021 from 40 days in 2019, said Commerce. Inventories are even smaller in “key industries,” like broadband, it said. The agency will “capitalize” on the data gleaned from the RFI “to engage industry on node-specific problem-solving in the coming weeks,” said the report.

T-Mobile users sampled by Opensignal were connected to 5G 36.3% of the time, compared with 22.5% of the time for AT&T and 10.5% for Verizon, said a Monday report. T-Mobile also beat the other two on the reach of their 5G networks. AT&T and Verizon were roughly tied and beat T-Mobile on the “5G Video Experience” seen by customers. Verizon was tops on “5G Games Experience.”

Virtual- and augmented-reality hardware and accessory sales in the five weeks ended Christmas more than doubled over the 2020 period, NPD reported Thursday. "Consumers continue to look for unique entertainment experiences,” said analyst Ben Arnold, amid "challenges consumers faced in securing popular gaming consoles.”

Comcast and the Team Gleason Foundation are collaborating on the latest version of Comcast's Xfinity Adaptive Remote to give customers with disabilities control of Xfinity devices with assistive technology, they said Wednesday. The latest update adds the ability to assign custom buttons that execute an action or voice command of the customer’s choosing. They gave as examples toggling closed captions, searching for sports events and accessing the view from the connected front door camera. Team Gleason Foundation, founded by former New Orleans Saints player Steve Gleason after his diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, focuses on improving life for people living with ALS through technology and equipment.

Apple generated 22% of Q4 global smartphone shipments on strong iPhone 13 demand; Samsung followed at 20%, said a preliminary Canalys report Tuesday. Supply chain problems and COVID-19 limited overall shipment growth to 1%. Apple had “unprecedented” iPhone sales in mainland China on “aggressive pricing,” said the research firm. Though Apple’s supply chain is “starting to recover,” it was forced to cut production in Q4 due to shortages of key components, but supply chain disruptions affected low-end vendors the most, said analyst Nicole Peng. “Component manufacturers are eking out additional production, but it will take years for major foundries to significantly increase chip capacity.” Smartphone brands are responding by tweaking device specifications in response to available materials, approaching emerging chipmakers to secure new sources for ICs, focusing product lines on best-selling models and staggering new product releases, she said: Bottlenecks won't ease until the second half.

Qualcomm Technologies is using NRF 2022, the retail industry trade show at New York’s Javits Center, to showcase “how IoT technologies are helping retailers digitally transform their environments and processes,” blogged Art Miller, global head-retail IoT. “Our solutions improve in-store experiences by bringing the best of ‘online’ to the offline world, reducing friction at each stage of the retail journey and providing inspiration and advice to consumers, ultimately enhancing their shopping experience.” Examples include deploying robots for cleaning store floors, or using augmented-reality devices for training store employees, said Miller on Friday. NRF 2022 was to open Sunday and run through Tuesday.

“Baseline” forecasts for e-commerce growth through 2026 “exceed anything seen in the prior six or more years,” reported ABI Research Thursday. It’s projecting global e-commerce revenue will reach $8 trillion in 2026, from $560 billion in 2020, noting the “explosive” growth potential “underscores the need for supply chains to become more flexible and agile to address future disruptions and create more resilient value chains.” The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the weaknesses of “fragmented, regionally dependent, and inflexible supply chains,” said ABI analyst Susan Beardslee. “Even as current challenges subside, new, and potentially unforeseen challenges will become the norm, and companies will need to ensure supply under a more volatile business landscape.”

CTIA announced the launch of its 5G Security Test Bed (STB), which is designed to verify recommendations by the FCC’s Communications Security Reliability and Interoperability Council for 5G networks. It’s based at the University of Maryland, and CTIA, AT&T, Ericsson, T-Mobile, UScellular, Mitre and the school are its founding members, CTIA said Wednesday. “5G is the most secure generation of wireless technology, with enhanced protections built into it from the ground-up,” the group said: “The STB was created to build on this foundation, testing use cases, making recommendations, and further bolstering 5G’s security.” It will start as a 5G network with a 4G core, then change to a stand-alone network.