Global smartphone shipments plummeted 38% year on year in February, the biggest fall in category history, said Strategy Analytics Friday. Shipments fell to 61.8 million, from 99.2 million in February 2019, it said. Smartphone demand “collapsed in Asia last month,” due to the COVID-19 outbreak, as some Asian factories were unable to manufacture handsets and many consumers were unable or unwilling to buy new devices in retail stores, said analyst Neil Mawston. Despite “tentative signs of recovery in China,” SA expects worldwide smartphone shipments to remain weak in March, with “hundreds of millions” of affluent consumers sidelined, said analyst Yiwen Wu. The industry will likely turn to online flash sales, “generous discounts” or smartwatch bundles to lift sales, Wu said.

COVID-19 and its fallout's worst-case scenario is a year of decline for a “wide range” of consumer electronics industries, said Futuresource Thursday. After the smartphone category’s contraction over the past two years, 2020 was expected to be a breakout year with 5G. That push “may be delayed until 2021 should disruption continue,” the researcher forecast. The gaming industry, poised to jump-start stagnant sales with next-generations systems, could also be affected. Companies that could take coronavirus-related hits include Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, the report said. Some meetings can be moved to digital platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom, but there's little substitute for industry events that convene global decision-makers, noted the firm.

Purdue University researchers created an approach for multiple players to interact with the same virtual reality game on smartphones using a Wi-Fi connection. It also provides a “better and more cost-effective option for single-player use,” said professor Charlie Hu, who led the Purdue team. Coterie manages the challenge of rendering high-resolution virtual scenes to meet the stringent quality-of-experience (QoE) of VR. Those include high frame rate and low motion-to-photon latency, the delay between the movement of the user's head or game controller and the change of the VR device's display reflecting the user's movement, they said. The approach enables 4K-resolution VR on commodity mobile devices and allows up to 10 players to interact in the same VR application at a time, they said. VR apps using Coterie divided the heavy rendering task between the smartphone and an edge server over Wi-Fi in a way that reduces the load on the smartphone while allowing sub-frames rendered on both to be merged into the final frame within 16 milliseconds, satisfying the VR QoE, they said. Multiple players can share the same Wi-Fi with Coterie, which reduces the power draw and computation demand on each mobile device and provides a better user experience, researchers said. They also positioned the Coterie system for enterprise, education, health and entertainment applications.

Samsung Electronics America unveiled the Ascend Partner program Tuesday, saying it adds more tiers, a new partner portal and automated tools and processes for mobile, display and solid-state drive solution partners. It replaces the legacy Step program, taking a “simplified approach” for partners “by increasing market opportunities” and providing a single point of access to sales programs and resources, said the company. New tools include rebates and incentives and ways to “gain greater visibility” into performance through a “one-stop-shop” user interface. The Ascend partner portal gives access to marketing collateral, special pricing, deal registration, performance dashboards and digital training courses, it said. A central part of Samsung’s channel strategy for the business-to-business mobile division is to combine partners’ expertise with Samsung devices and endpoints to address the mobile needs of vertical industries, it said.

LG will price the 88- and 77-inch models in its ZX series of 8K OLED TVs at $29,000 and $19,999, respectively, when they debut at retail in May, said the manufacturer Monday. Three series of 4K sets, plus the $4,999 WX “wallpaper” 4K TV will round out LG’s 2020 OLED offerings, it said. The top 4K tier is called the GX “gallery” series, with 55-, 65- and 77-inch models due in April priced $2,499 to $5,999, said LG. The gallery series is so named because the TVs in that line sport an ultra-thin form factor without the need for a separate control box, and can be mounted flush to the wall, it said. LG’s lowest-priced OLED TV for 2020 will be $1,599 for the 55-inch model in the BX series due in May. The three models in the GX series, the two 8K sets and the wallpaper TV all will have ATSC 3.0 functionality, said LG.

CTA is canvassing members and other companies for information it's compiling for a “public-facing” website on telehealth practices in the tech industry. It asked respondents to complete a questionnaire by Tuesday summarizing their digital health offerings. The questionnaire also asks companies to identify what “federal and state legal and regulatory barriers” are preventing them from “fully deploying services/solutions to address COVID-19.”

Broadcom withdrew 2020 financial guidance “until ... visibility returns to pre-COVID-19 levels,” said CEO Hock Tan on a fiscal Q1 call Thursday. Its Q4 release Dec. 12 predicted an 11% revenue increase for fiscal 2020 ending early November. Its Q1 ended Feb. 2. Tan said he hasn’t seen “a meaningful impact” on Broadcom semiconductor bookings from the coronavirus and thinks “the fundamentals of the business remain very much intact.” But there’s “no doubt COVID-19 has created a high level of uncertainty,” and that’s sure to hurt operations, especially in the year’s second half, he said. The stock closed up 7.1% Friday at $234.22. As consumer spending declines from the coronavirus, “the confidence level among businesses, enterprises might erode,” said Tan. That would “delay or push out spending by enterprises,” but that’s “all speculation,” he said. “We're trying to understand the impact of COVID-19 on our ecosystem,” but it’s at “a very early stage in the whole process,” he said. Broadcom, which put its wireless chip business up for sale last year, now has no interest in getting rid of it, said Tan. “Continuing to invest in and operate our wireless assets will create the most value.” Recent chip-supply agreements position Broadcom as “more closely and strategically aligned with our largest smartphone customer,” said Tan. The customer is known to be Apple. The agreements are for three-year terms, he said. They require Broadcom to “provide technology and road map alignment” in RF components for the “next three generations of 5G phones,” he said.

Silicon Labs agreed to buy Redpine Signals’ connectivity business, including its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth assets, development center and patent portfolio, for $308 million in cash, it said Thursday. Integration of Redpine technology will accelerate Silicon Labs’ work on Wi-Fi 6 silicon, software and solutions, said the company. The acquisition also includes Bluetooth Classic IP (including Extended Data Rate) for audio applications including wearables, hearables, voice assistants and smart speakers. The deal includes an at-scale design center with about 200 employees in Hyderabad, India. Silicon Labs expects the transaction to add about $20 million in incremental revenue on an annualized basis for fiscal 2020; the deal is expected to close in Q2.

Saint-Gobain is working with Ossia on a new category of smart products for industrial, building, automotive, and consumer applications, said the companies Wednesday. Ossia’s Cota Real Wireless Power technology is designed to deliver power over the air. The company bowed at CES a battery-free IoT system said to be continuously powered using wireless charging. Cota power receivers can be embedded into IoT devices, wearables and other electronics.

Best Buy put “strict” employee travel policies in place and “canceled meetings with large gatherings” to do what it can to help prevent coronavirus spread, said a customer notice Tuesday. It offered to reschedule in-home consultations, deliveries, installations or repairs. “For in-home consultations, we offer options for phone or video conversations with our experts if you so choose,” it said. Stores will have “ramped up cleaning services,” adding hand sanitizer dispensers at entrances and all cash registers, the company said. “Sanitizing wipes are near workstations and counters so that employees can keep them continuously cleaned.”