LG Electronics USA got FCC equipment authorizations for...

LG Electronics USA got FCC equipment authorizations for what appears will be a broad lineup of car infotainment products destined soon for U.S. introduction, filings at the FCC website show (http://bit.ly/1fInTax). Little is disclosed in the filings that pinpoints whether the products will debut in the consumer electronics aftermarket or will be supplied on a factory original equipment manufacturer basis to major automakers, or both. LG asked for and got permanent confidentiality on the products’ block diagrams and other technical materials because they “contain trade secrets and proprietary information not customarily released to the public,” LG’s application said. “The public disclosure of these matters might be harmful to the Applicant and provide unjustified benefits to its competitors.” Public disclosure of product photos and user manuals has been barred for 180 days to Sept. 10 to give LG “temporary confidentiality of commercially sensitive information prior to product release,” it said. The authorizations are for a lineup of 44 derivatives of eight basic product models, the LG filings show. Of the 44 derivatives, about half have external “aux” jacks, the rest internal ports, it said. All but 12 have USB functionality, while 13 have built-in CD transports, and 20 sport digital radio tuners, they show. Bluetooth functionality is built into 24 of the derivatives, and nine have connectBlue wireless firmware support, they show. Searching any of the listed model numbers (for example, L41SK2) yields listings of identical models under a “Car Infotainment” heading on the OpenSource Code Distribution page of LG’s global support website (http://bit.ly/1mrWQyH). LG didn’t comment.