Halo Collar plans to premiere a connected dog collar at Mobile World Congress in Los Angeles Tuesday that lets owners communicate with their pet over a cellular connection. The company partnered with mobile virtual network operator Kore Wireless for the collar, which has a sub-$5 monthly service fee to use the CAT-M1 LTE network, it said Monday. Halo pitches the collar as an alternative to a conventional electric fence, saying it enables owners to train their dogs to recognize boundaries. The collar provides “smart training” and an activity tracker, and it automatically downloads daily satellite updates to improve GPS accuracy, said the company. Owners can create up to 20 wireless fences.

Global smartphone shipments, which grew year on year in Q2 despite the spread of the COVID-19 delta variant and component shortages, will turn negative in Q3 due to continued supply shortages and reduced demand, said Omdia analyst Jusy Hong in a Monday report. Impacts of the pandemic “continue to reverberate” in the semiconductor and display markets, with shortages, supply-demand imbalance and price fluctuation, he said.

Development of open radio access network technology is progressing, with 48 specification documents released since July, said the O-RAN Alliance Friday. Its Global Plugfest has featured 77 companies at seven venues. “O-RAN technical specification effort progresses with healthy momentum,” the group said. It keeps expanding RAN standards "with open interfaces and intelligent RAN functions," it said. "All published specifications will soon be available to the general public."

The order backlog at Nordic Semiconductor “keeps increasing,” said CEO Svenn-Tore Larsen on a Q3 earnings call Thursday. It ended the quarter with a $1.3 billion backlog, “basically four times the backlog the same time last year,” he said. The chipmaker now worries its backlog will “stretch into '23,” he said. “The challenge we have at Nordic is to focus on the customer situation. We need to ensure we can give the Tier-1s the opportunity to grow the same as we keep our longtail customers happy.” The challenge is “very difficult with this constrained supply situation, but that's what we work on every day,” he said.

Global information technology spending will approach $4.5 trillion in 2022, increasing 5.5% from 2021, reported Gartner Wednesday. This assumes 2.3% growth in device spending to nearly $821 billion, it said. Global spending growth on devices is expected to spike 15.1% higher this year as remote work, telehealth and remote learning take hold, but Gartner expects 2022 will still show an uptick in enterprises that upgrade devices or invest in multiple devices “to thrive in a hybrid work setting.”

Energous got an FCC Part 15 grant of equipment authorization for a wireless power transmitter at any distance, an “inflection point” for wireless charging, acting CEO Cesar Johnston told us Tuesday. “You’re seeing the transition of the increase of power and the increase of distance, which effectively opens up now a potential market that did not exist before.” Energous' 1-watt Active Energy Harvesting transmitter can charge multiple devices at once, enabling over-the-air charging at any distance for IoT devices such as retail sensors, electronic shelf labels and industrial devices, said the company. It received similar approval from European regulators in May (see 2105110013).

The M1 family of chips was among highlights at Apple's Monday product launch event. And later this year, Siri is expanding support for multi-user voice recognition so “everyone in the home can set music according to their preferences," Apple said. The company bowed a premium plan for Apple Music that gives subscribers voice access to the service’s full catalog for an additional $4.99 monthly. Users can request music be played across Siri-enabled devices, including CarPlay, the company said. The company increased the power in its Mac chips, with the M1 Pro and M1 Max introducing a SoC architecture to pro systems for the first time.

Comments are due Nov. 15, replies Dec. 14, on FCC-proposed changes to customer proprietary network information and local number portability rules to require carriers to adopt methods of authenticating a customer before redirecting that customer's phone number to a new device or carrier, said Friday's Federal Register. Commissioners adopted the NPRM 4-0 at September's meeting (see 2109300069).

Chipmakers are challenged by “short-term imbalances due to interruptions in the supply chain brought on by COVID-19,” said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. CEO C.C. Wei on a quarterly call Thursday. “We also continue to observe the structural increase in long-term demand” fueled by the “industry megatrends” of 5G and high-performance computing (HPC), plus the “higher silicon content in many end devices,” he said. Quarterly revenue in TSMC’s largest end-market segment, smartphones, increased to account for 44% of the total. See here for Q3 materials.

Best Buy agreed to buy Current Health, a care-at-home technology platform that combines remote patient monitoring, telehealth and patient engagement, it said Tuesday. “The future of consumer technology is directly connected to the future of healthcare,” said Best Buy Health President Deborah Di Sanzo.