Samsung’s share of the worldwide smartphone market fell to 24 percent in Q3, from 32 percent in the year-ago quarter, according to Gartner Group. Samsung’s deepest decline was in feature phones, shipment of which decreased by 10.8 percent year over year. Demand for Samsung’s smartphones weakened mostly in Western Europe and Asia, Gartner said, with smartphone sales tumbling 29 percent in China, its biggest market. Emerging markets continued to drive smartphone sales in Q3, with Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa showing growth of 50 percent year over year, Gartner said. The U.S. led mature markets with 20 percent growth in the quarter, fueled by Apple’s debut of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, said the report. Smartphone sales in Western Europe dropped 5 percent, the third consecutive quarterly decline of the year, it said. Following 26 percent year-over-year growth for Apple worldwide in Q3, Gartner expects record sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the holiday quarter, “but we should not underestimate the Chinese vendors and local brands,” said Annette Zimmermann, Gartner research director. Chinese smartphone companies will continue efforts to penetrate overseas emerging markets, while prepaid markets in Europe and low-cost LTE phones will also offer “key opportunities” for Chinese brands, she said. Huawei moved into the No. 3 position worldwide among smartphone vendors, although fewer than 1 million units separate the number three, four and five players, all Chinese brands, Gartner said. Xiaomi cracked the top five for the first time on a 336 percent sales increase, driven by a “strong performance in China” where it became the leading brand, Gartner said. Lenovo filled out the top five for the quarter with market share of 5 percent. Gartner expects 2014 sales of smartphones to reach 1.2 billion units worldwide.

Coral Wireless asked the FCC to overturn a decision by the Internal Audit Division of the Universal Service Administrative Company to recover universal service support from Coral based on a finding that a certain number of the reported lines were not revenue producing. The carrier reported on a series of meetings at the FCC in filings in docket 05-337, posted by the FCC Monday. The Wireline Bureau rejected Coral’s arguments. Coral could not have been providing telecom services with the lines at issue “because Coral's terms and conditions permitted, but did not require,” Coral to reroute nonemergency calls to Coral's customer care center during the 60-day period preceding disconnection for non-payment, the filing said. The ruling could create “unintended harm,” Coral said. “Unless the Order is reversed, any service provider will be able to evade regulation as a common carrier merely by including in its terms and conditions a provision that gives the provider the right, but not the obligation, to route calls to locations other than the dialed telephone number.”

The automotive industry doesn’t need to “reinvent security credentialing” or create an “isolated” automotive network as it moves forward on a vehicle-to-vehicle security credential management system (SCMS), CTIA said in comments filed Monday in response to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration request for information. Many of the issues faced in that industry are similar to those raised by a “growing M2M [machine-to-machine] communications ecosystem that supports the Internet of Things,” CTIA said. “M2M communications systems are faced with the same challenges to establish secure lines of communications and authenticate devices. Creating a separate, isolated network dedicated to automotive vehicles and associated infrastructure would likely result in dis-economies of scale in connection with production costs, deployment, and interoperability.”

The decisions the FCC makes in the net neutrality proceeding have implications for spectrum, as the FCC also looks at the future use of bands above 24 GHz, said a filing by Nokia posted by the FCC in docket 14-28. Ulrich Rehfuess, Nokia spectrum policy leader, was at the FCC to brief staff on European spectrum policy, but he ended up fielding questions on “applicability of European initiatives to analogous US proceedings,” Nokia said. “Nokia specifically noted that the ability to prioritize traffic based on the application or service, or the ability to create specialized classes of services is critical to the development of technologies requiring very low latency, large throughput, and minimal packet loss including autonomous driving and streaming of live broadcast events,” the company said. “Nokia reiterated its views that the Commission should not reclassify broadband under Title II of the Communications Act and must allow for flexibility to offer specialized services that provide prioritization for traffic associated with particularly sensitive applications and services.” Among those at the meeting for the FCC were Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology, and John Leibovitz, deputy chief of the Wireless Bureau, Nokia said.

Shipments of smartphones with near-field communications capability built in will jump at a 55.8 percent compound annual growth rate through 2019, said a report available for sale from the research firm TechNavio. NFC technology "has revolutionized the ways in which people access and use data and information," the report said. "NFC-enabled devices can be used for applications such as mobile payment, loyalty programs, interactive advertising, ID authentication, and transit fare collection."

CTIA called “misconceived” Neustar’s claims that Ericsson’s connections to the association influenced its support for Ericsson subsidiary Telcordia's selection as the next local number portability administrator, said an ex parte filing. Neustar wrote the FCC Tuesday in another ex parte filing, saying Ericsson President Angel Ruiz is secretary of CTIA’s board. "CTIA’s advocacy reflects the point of view of the largest wireless carriers who have strategic or commercial reasons” for Telcordia’s selection, Neustar wrote. CTIA responded that it’s “no secret that CTIA is a trade association that represents its members’ interests -- including twenty-six carriers that serve more than 96 percent of the nation’s wireless customers. ... Neustar evidently does not think its own advocacy should be discounted simply because of its obvious personal stake in this proceeding.”

The FCC sought comment Friday on its Technological Advisory Council’s Dec. 4 report on mobile device theft prevention. The Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology sought general comment on recommendations in the report, “with a particular emphasis on recommendations for industry that can be implemented in the near term to provide timely benefits to consumers,” the agency said. Mobile device theft has been a top focus for the TAC and for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (see 1403110031). Comments are due Jan. 30, replies Feb. 17.

Proponents of an industry road map for improving location accuracy for wireless calls made indoors explained details of the proposal at a meeting at the FCC, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 07-114. The plan was unveiled last month by AT&T, APCO, CTIA, the National Emergency Number Association, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon (see 1411190064). The meeting focused on the “formation of a test bed, dispatchable location commitments, improvements in and deployments of horizontal location technologies, steps to advance vertical location technologies providing back-up solutions for indoor calls, and metrics and deliverables,” the filing said. The industry representatives met with officials from the FCC's Disability Rights Office and the Public Safety Bureau, the filing said. AARP said in a filing that the agency should move forward on its own proposal for location accuracy rules laid out in a February NPRM (see 1402210038). "The carriers’ agreement does not provide accountability or assurance that its plan would be effective," AARP said. "The FCC’s proposed rules provide specific, fair and measurable requirements for indoor location accuracy." AT&T fired a shot at the Find Me 911 coalition and TruePosition over their arguments against the road map. “TruePosition and its fully-controlled FindMe911 coalition is at it again, spreading misinformation and ill-informed criticisms of the APCO, NENA [National Emergency Number Association], and Wireless Industry Roadmap for Improving Location Accuracy,” said Joe Marx, assistant vice president-federal regulatory, in a blog post Friday. He countered arguments that the industry proposal is based on untested technologies. “Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies have been in use for years in commercial location services, and are central to the current wireless ecosystem in ways that will drive strong incentives for further innovation and lasting relevance for years to come,” he said. “The phone companies seem to think if they repeat what is not true often enough, people will ignore the actual wording of the plan they proposed,” said Jamie Barnett, lawyer at Venable who represents the coalition. “Here is what is absolutely true: before the roadmap, the phone companies were against the FCC’s proposed rules because it would hold them accountable. Now they are for the roadmap because it will allow the phone companies to escape accountability for location accuracy. No one should be fooled by this Trojan Horse.” The road map does propose use of untested technologies, relying on creation of a "National Emergency Address Database,” he said. “Instead of enforceable and concrete benchmarks to locate callers, the phone company plan is based on process-oriented steps like ‘tests,’ ‘demonstrations,’ and ‘studies,’ coupled with nice-sounding goals for the deployment of specific, minimal-cost handset technologies that have failed in the past to provide accurate indoor locations.”

Ford launched Sync 3 in-vehicle entertainment and communications system Thursday, promising faster performance, more “conversational” voice recognition, an intuitive touch screen similar to that of a smartphone and a simplified graphical interface. The company said it drew from 22,000 customer comments and suggestions in creating the third-generation platform, along with information from focus groups, surveys and competitive analysis. The system is optimized for hands-free operation, but the new touch screen delivers an experience similar to using a smartphone or tablet with gestures including pinch-to-zoom and swipe, it said. The display offers a bright background and large buttons with “high-contrast fonts” for daytime use, and at night it switches automatically to a dark background to help reduce eye fatigue and minimize reflections, Ford said. To reduce on-screen complexity, the home screen offers a choice of zones, navigation, audio and phone, and the system prioritizes the control options customers use most, the company said. Phone contacts are searchable via a finger swipe, and users can look up points of interest or addresses with a search box. The new voice recognition system cuts down on the number of steps required to carry out a command, Ford said. A user can name a song, artist, album or genre to bring up a song from a connected smartphone, no longer having to identify a category, the company said, and to switch to SiriusXM or terrestrial radio, users say the name of the station or station number. New features in AppLink enable users to control compatible apps using voice commands or buttons on screen, and AppLink automatically discovers streaming music service apps such as iHeartRadio Auto, NPR One, Pandora, Spotify, SiriusXM and Stitcher, Ford said. In the case of a "significant' accident, a Bluetooth-connected phone is used to dial 911, alerting first-responders to the vehicle’s location. With Sync 3, additional information is relayed, including if airbags were deployed, where damage occurred to the vehicle and the number of safety belts detected in use to help emergency call takers dispatch the appropriate resources to the scene, Ford said.

U.S. Cellular said it signed an agreement with Vertical Bridge Holdings to sell the company 595 towers for about $159 million in markets divested by the carrier. The deal is expected to close in the Q1, U.S. Cellular said Thursday. The carrier plans to use the money for “long-term investments that position U.S. Cellular for future growth opportunities,” said CEO Kenneth Meyers. Vertical Bridge CEO Alexander Gellman said: "Many of these sites are in locations that would be very difficult to replace."