Sprint launched another version of the HTC One Friday. The HTC One E8, available in white or gray, is offered with Sprint Easy Pay, which allows qualified customers to buy the phone for $0 down with 24 monthly payments of $20.84. Features include Android 4.4.2, a 5-inch display, 2.3 GHz processor, 13-megapixel front and 5-megapixel rear cameras, Wi-Fi Calling and HD Voice. The phone can be a 3G/4G hotspot, Sprint said.

International Data Corp. (IDC) cut its worldwide forecast for tablets and 2-in-1 mobile devices after a second consecutive quarter of “softer-than-expected demand” (http://bit.ly/1B0NmlW). The forecast is now for a growth rate of 6.5 percent to 233.1 million shipments, nearly half the 12.1 percent growth rate previously predicted, it said Friday. While tablet growth in mature markets including North America and Western Europe will be flat this year, “a good appetite” remains for tablets in other markets, where a 12 percent growth rate is forecast, said analyst Jean Philippe Bouchard. Average selling prices (ASPs) are expected to stabilize at $373 in mature markets this year due to a shift to larger screen sizes and cellular-enabled tablets, while ASPs in the rest of the world are forecast to decline 10 percent to $302. As an example of evolving tablet usage, IDC cited a built-in option of voice calling over cellular networks in tablets for the Asia-Pacific market (excluding Japan) that drove 25 percent growth in Q2. The trend, IDC said, suggests that users in that region are looking for a single device that handles voice communication and media consumption needs. “For some that single device is a tablet and not a smartphone,” IDC said. The rest of the world is expected to account for the majority of tablet shipments in coming years, said analyst Jitesh Ubrani, but medium- to large-sized tablets in North America and Western Europe will “still produce significant revenues,” he said.

Sensorstream, which calls itself a “struggling” San Francisco-based startup, sees a $1 trillion opportunity in smart watches and their ecosystem of components, its founder, Tom Rapko, told us. Sensorstream just landed a design patent from the Patent and Trademark Office for a circular smart watch case that’s buttonless with interior threading “to support an upgradable modular electronics package,” and the company is looking for partners, Rapko said. “The wearables business is going to go the way of a garage startup” reminiscent of Apple’s founding, Rapko said. “Even though the Valley is hugely software-centric, I think there’s a huge opportunity in the hardware space for wearables, and in particular, smart watches,” he said of developer work currently happening in the Silicon Valley on behalf of wearables. Rapko thinks smart watches will “drive disruptive innovations in social networking, entertainment and commerce,” he said. Sensorstream’s smart watch case is called Pi, the company said. It differs from traditional watch cases in that it’s devoid of all external buttons, to protect it from the elements, it said. The threaded design on its interior promotes adaptability to modular electronics that can be fitted in and enhances “the ergonomic contours of the smart watch to hug the wearer’s wrist for enhanced stability,” it said. Smart watches have the “potential to rival” or exceed the most successful consumer electronics “ever released” in terms of fast adoption rates, Rapko said. Form factors “will help shape consumer adoption of smart watches,” he said. “Aesthetically, we feel a circular display is superior to the dreary square. Frankly, the end game is fusing the look and feel of a Swiss luxury watch with the core functionality of a smart phone.”

Roughly 30 percent of smart home owners experience monthly glitches with core functions of connected devices, said research presented by Parks Associates in a recent webinar on the impact of the Internet of Things on support services. Examples of snags homeowners have encountered with smart home products include timing issues with automated lighting control, where lights didn’t come on at the programmed times, thermostats that didn’t keep temperatures to programmed levels, and door locks that didn’t perform as expected, said analyst Patrice Samuels. She called the findings “disconcerting” to smart home owners. “Because these devices are in the earlier stages, they're more susceptible to functional glitches,” Samuels said. But at such an early stage of the category’s development, “you really don’t want anything to go wrong in the devices that are controlling your home,” she said. Support of smart home devices requires a “greater sense of urgency,” she said. Support will be critical to the advancement of the smart home to prevent technology snafus from becoming “barriers to adoption” and the growth of the IoT, Samuels said. Connected entertainment products are more technologically mature, on the other hand, and problems associated with using Blu-ray players, smart TVs, streaming media players and gaming consoles are “less the result of glitches” and more related to quality concerns that can relate to bandwidth, Samuels said. With streaming media players, consumers may complain about sound or picture quality versus being able to play a program. Consumption on streaming media devices and smart TVs has increased “dramatically” over the past year, while consumption on gaming consoles has gone up “pretty steadily” over the past three to four years, said Samuels. The average broadband household owns an average of seven connectable devices, and more consumers are now connecting devices such as game consoles and Blu-ray players to the Internet versus only using their core functions. Demand will continue to increase with IoT growth, said Samuels.

A model spectrum city, as envisioned by the Obama administration, could prove “quite useful as a tool to facilitate experimentation and validation of proposed concepts that could lead to improved spectrum sharing methods and techniques,” Nokia Solutions and Networks US said in comments (http://bit.ly/1vUKaWd) filed at the FCC, posted Friday in docket 14-99. In July, NTIA and the FCC sought comment on a public-private partnership to create a spectrum test city (CD July 14 p15), a recommendation of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in its July 2012 spectrum sharing report. The city could be used to advance the understanding of the propagation among the different systems trying to share the same spectrum, Nokia said. The Irregular Terrain Model (ITM) is the one generally used by government agencies, but “there is limited empirical data to validate the parameterization of the ITM models,” Nokia said. “It would be very beneficial to those who design and manufacture radio equipment to have reasonably validated propagation models in order to innovate and seek good solutions to the challenges of sharing spectrum with disparate systems ideally to the point of co-existing with those systems rather than trying to simply avoid them.” Nokia suggested that funding shouldn’t be just from private industry and said the administration should seek “supportive funding from entities such as the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Commerce or other means."

Microsoft modified app certification requirements to reduce imitation apps, it said in a blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1licjpg). “Earlier this year we heard loud and clear that people were finding it more difficult to find the apps they were searching for; often having to sort through lists of apps with confusing or misleading titles.” The changes will give more weight to apps’ names, icons and categorization, the company said. “We've also been working on titles already in the catalog, conducting a review of Windows Store to identify titles that do not comply with our modified certification requirements.” Through this process, Microsoft has removed more than 1,500 apps from the app store, it said. Customers can apply for a refund if they paid for a misleading app, Microsoft said.

Global smartphone shipments jumped 50 percent last year to more than a billion units and are on track to top 1.2 billion in 2014, Futuresource Consulting said Thursday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1papCTC). Smartphones have seen a “steady move” toward larger screen sizes, and “phablets” with screen sizes 5.5 inches and larger are expected “to gain an increasingly significant share of the market, as smaller bezels and greater availability of mobile content will make the form factor increasingly appealing,” it said. Though “ongoing strong growth” is expected globally, smartphones are “increasingly nearing the saturation point in many developed markets,” where they already are the majority of handset sales, it said. “However, in many developing markets there are still considerable growth opportunities for feature phones. Likewise, the universal appeal of the smartphone -- due to its role in allowing internet access coupled with rapidly falling prices -- will result in an unprecedented level of uptake even in extremely poor countries, where a smartphone will act as a primary device.” A separate IDC report Thursday (http://bit.ly/VPYLFE) closely mirrored Futuresource’s findings. IDC estimated more than 1.25 billion smartphones will be shipped worldwide in 2014, a 23.8 percent increase from 2013. It projected a 12.7 percent compound annual growth rate in smartphone shipments through 2018, when 1.8 billion units will ship. Emerging markets have been more than half of all annual smartphone shipments dating back to 2011, “so it is no question that they have been crucial to the growth of the overall market,” IDC said. “However, up until 2014, mature markets have consistently delivered double-digit year-on-year growth.” But this year, mature-market growth will slow to just 4.9 percent, with emerging markets “continuing to soar” at 32.4 percent, it said.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau ordered Telava Wireless, a San Francisco-based tower company, to pay $7,500 for failing to monitor its antenna structure lighting as required by agency rules and failure to repair unlit antenna structure lighting as soon as practicable. The violation was for an antenna in Fordsville, Kentucky (http://bit.ly/1q8U85D). “Telava does not dispute the violations, but requests cancellation of the forfeiture based on an alleged inability to pay,” the bureau said. The FCC had proposed a fine of $17,000, but reduced it based on financial documents from Telava. The bureau warned, “future violations may result in significantly higher forfeitures that may not be reduced due to Telava’s financial circumstances.” Telava had no immediate comment Thursday.

The FCC should reject “self-serving” arguments by Sprint and T-Mobile asking it to rethink key parts of its May 15 spectrum holdings order (CD Aug 13 p1), Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1pmKT2x). Sprint and T-Mobile have had a different message for Wall Street and the FCC, he wrote. Spalter cited a T-Mobile news release (http://t-mo.co/1qFPGev) and a Sprint comment on the carrier’s spectrum position (http://bit.ly/1tP8cBv) saying the firm’s “spectrum position allows us to take a more aggressive stance in offering more data.” In “today’s more transparent world, you can’t have it both ways: Desperately seeking special spectrum handouts from government while simultaneously declaring spectrum superiority,” Spalter said. Sprint fired back. “Mr. Spalter’s latest blog is yet another attempt to perpetuate a virtual duopoly in the U.S. wireless market,” a spokesman said. AT&T and Verizon, “major supporters” of Mobile Future, “control the lion’s share of low-band spectrum and will go to great lengths to preserve their competitive advantage,” the spokesman said. Competitive carriers also need access to low-band spectrum, said Steve Berry, president of the Competitive Carriers Association: “It is not surprising that Mobile Future, an organization largely funded by AT&T and Verizon, is going to bat for the largest national carriers.”

Broadcom introduced a new development kit for its WICED family (for Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices) family of components to enable developers to rapidly prototype “ideas and concepts” for Internet of Things devices and applications, the company said Wednesday. The $19.99 kit includes Broadcom’s newest Bluetooth Smart chip and five micro electro-mechanical systems and has a software stack that is Bluetooth 4.1 compatible, the company said. “By shortening the time between early ideas and end products, companies are able to deliver devices to market more quickly and with higher confidence in their success,” it said. Possible “use cases” range from a single-sensor technology to sophisticated programs gathering and analyzing data from multiple sensors, it said. It gave such smart home examples as using the kit to set up text alerts to be notified if a child’s bedroom rises above a certain temperature.