Making internet services ubiquitous in households, a Silicon Labs’ virtual conference theme last week (see 2009110043), necessitates addressing security and other concerns, speakers said. “Our services should melt into the background, becoming as reliable and essential as running water or electricity,” said Grant Erickson, Google principal software engineer. Manufacturers incur high development costs to support multiple, “lightly differentiated and fundamentally non-interoperable stock keeping units,” he said. Consumers don’t know what works together and how their privacy and security are protected, he said. Such challenges must be met to reach the $150 billion 2023 valuation Google expects for the IoT, Erickson said. Google put its weight behind Project Connected Home Over IP. Erickson called CHIP a “critical movement to break through the fragmentation that’s holding the market back.” Comcast invested heavily there, said Jim Kitchen, vice president-product in its connected home devices and platforms unit. That the CHIP code will be available to developers as a starting point will drive ubiquity and interoperability that hasn’t existed before, Kitchen said. Though the IoT has gotten better with advances in technology, it’s confusing for end users, he said. He cited a “boundary” for shopping in store or online to "confidently purchase a device that they know is going to work with the rest of the things that are in their home or with whatever platform they’ve decided to invest in.” He doesn't “know if getting to the next level of interoperability is going to be the thing that finally lets these products get into 300 million homes in North America, but I know that has to happen before we get into 300 million homes.”

T-Mobile and Ericsson jointly demoed 16-layer multi-user multi-input multi-output (MU-MIMO) technology, with throughput of more than 5.6 Gbps. The test used 2.5 GHz spectrum. “At scale, this technology means T-Mobile could connect massively more devices to the same cell infrastructure and still deliver blazing fast speeds to all of them without compromising performance,” T-Mobile said Thursday.

Vizio customers can access the Apple TV app on their SmartCast TVs to watch Apple TV+ and other content, said the vendor Tuesday. An Apple TV+ subscription costs $4.99 monthly, but eligible U.S. SmartCast customers can sign up through Oct. 16 to get it free for three months, Vizio said. The offer is valid for new Apple TV+ subscribers who own 2016 or later SmartCast TVs enabled with SmartCast Home.

CTA and member company representatives spoke with an aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai urging action on a June petition to allow presale of new RF devices before authorization (see 2006030044). CTA got general support when the FCC took comments in July (see 2007100042). “The unequivocal national priority of 5G deployment warrants an expeditious launch of the requested rulemaking proceeding,” said a filing posted Friday in RM-11857: “As the winter holiday season approaches, the requested interim waivers will benefit both companies and consumers.” This would bring policies “more closely in line with today’s marketplace realities.” Amazon, Samsung and Google were among attendees.

Samsung announced the Premiere 4K ultra-short-throw laser projector in 120- and 130-inch models. It's the first projector with Filmmaker Mode, said Samsung, the feature introduced at the urging of Hollywood directors last year (see 1908270001). The projectors have HDR10+, Samsung’s Smart TV platform, built-in woofers and Acoustic Beam surround sound. Peak brightness is 2,800 ANSI lumens.

Panasonic teamed with Square Enix on the SoundSlayer gaming speaker, set for September availability. B&H Photo showed the 2.1-channel system Tuesday as “coming soon” for $299. The 17 x 2-1/16 x 5-1/4 inch sound bar has three sound modes: role-playing game, first-person shooter and voice; it supports Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and DTS Virtual:X immersive audio formats. Panasonic is pitching the Bluetooth-equipped sound bar as an alternative to headphones, which it said can become uncomfortable after prolonged use.

Acer’s Predator Orion gaming desktops will support Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs, said the PC vendor Tuesday. The GPUs power graphics “experiences” at all resolutions, “even up to 8K at the top end,” said Acer.

Qualcomm announced the 732G platform, with stepped-up graphics and processing performance for mobile gaming, as a follow-on to the Snapdragon 730G platform. The artificial intelligence-based 732G has a clock speed of up to 2.3 GHz, vs. 2.2 GHz for the standard platform, with a 15% graphics rendering improvement, said the company Monday. Users will experience more realistic game play in more than a billion shades of color, it said. An upcoming smartphone from Poco will be the first to use the chipset.

Industry shortages of laptop LCD panels and components threaten to impede sales as the supply chain buckles under the weight of sustained consumer demand for notebook PCs as “essential” work-from-home and remote-learning connectivity tools, said market leaders HP and Dell on their Thursday earnings calls. HP’s fiscal Q3 consumer revenue soared 30%, while Dell’s Q2 consumer business was up 18%. Both quarters ended July 31. Both stocks closed 6% higher Friday, HP at $19.85, Dell at $66.21.HP said it expects industry-wide "constraints" in CPUs and panels will “negatively impact” its ability to meet demand, especially for notebooks. The “key limitation” in HP’s fiscal Q4 ending late October is “on the supply chain side,” said CEO Enrique Lores. “We really need to continue to find more components, processors, some panels to respond to the demand that we see.” Revenue was up 30% for HP notebooks in Q3 but down 29% for desktops and down 30% for workstations.

T-Mobile is offering service switchers a free iPhone 11 or 11 Pro, or up to $1,000 off an iPhone Pro Max -- via bill credits -- with an eligible in-store trade-in and qualifying plan. It’s offering existing customers a buy-one-get-one offer on the 11 or 11 Pro, or up to $1,000 of an iPhone Pro Max, via bill credit, when they add a voice line to a qualifying line, said the carrier Friday. It didn't give an end date for the limited-time offer. The company didn't respond to questions.