Printed flexible electronics materials already used in smartphones and sensors are forecast to become a $6.9 billion business by 2031, with wider adoption in applications such as medical devices and smart packaging, reported IDTechEx Wednesday. It cited “extensive opportunities for innovative materials,” including novel OLED emitters and conductive inks and adhesives.

Apple’s “embracing the ability” to capture, share and edit content in Dolby Vision on iPhone 12 models shows how “the Dolby experience can apply far beyond even those more traditional forms of content,” said Dolby CEO Kevin Yeaman on a Thursday investor call. Dolby Vision continues to be a growth area for the company, said the executive, estimating the HDR technology is in 15%-20% of 4K TVs. In the last fiscal year, 4K models were just over 50% of the TV market for Dolby, he said. The company is winding down and exiting conferencing hardware sales, said Yeaman. It's focusing now on Dolby Voice through software on the Dolby.io platform, which is designed to give developers the tools they need to enhance content with high-quality sound with a minimal amount of code. The company is seeing growing engagement with Dolby.io from developers in a range of uses, including podcasts, media production, online marketplace videos, online education, social media and livestreaming applications, he said. Dolby’s fiscal Q4 revenue fell 9% year on year to $271 million, and year-on-year revenue dropped 6% to $1.2 billion, mostly due to COVID-19, said Chief Financial Officer Lewis Chew. The company beat the high end of guidance for the quarter, $255 million. Quarterly revenue improved by $24 million vs. Q3 on higher unit volumes in TVs, set-top boxes, digital media adapters and PCs, he said. Overall licensing revenue growth slipped 3% for the quarter and year. Despite continued headwinds in its cinema-related business, Dolby “significantly exceeded Q4 expectations,” Colliers analyst Steven Frankel wrote investors Friday, saying “the best is yet to come” as the business benefits from 4K TVs and set-top boxes, new gaming platform launches and growth of the Dolby.io platform. Shares closed 7% higher Friday at $87.20.

The global PC market had a 23% year-on-year bump in shipments to 124.5 million, said Canalys Thursday. Lenovo led, shipping 23.5 million tablets, notebooks and desktops, followed by Apple with 22.1 million Macs and iPads, HP with 18.7 million PCs and Dell with 12 million PCs. Tablets grew 43% to 44.3 million, with Apple taking the top position, growing 47% to 15.2 million. Samsung tablet sales spiked 80%, topping the 9 million mark for the first time since 2015. “Tablets are a natural choice for first-time PC users who want something uncomplicated and affordable,” said analyst Victoria Li, citing the “natural extension of Android and iOS" from phones to tablets, which made it simple for those “who dabbled with extended remote learning for the first time.” Chromebook shipments jumped 122% to a record 9.4 million. Detachables grew 88%, and all-in-ones advanced 7%, while the overall desktop category slid 32%.

Apple announced the M1 chip, its most powerful ever, designed specifically for the Mac. The SoC, with 16 billion transistors, is the first personal computer chip built using a 5-nanometer process, Apple said Tuesday. The SoC delivers 3.5 times faster central processing unit performance, six times faster graphics performance and 15 times faster machine learning, said the company, with twice the battery life.

Intelsat’s $400 million buy of Gogo's commercial aviation connectivity business (see 2009010001) remains on track for closing by the end of Q1, said Gogo CEO Oakleigh Thorne on a Q3 investor call Monday. The transaction cleared the Hart-Scott-Rodino process and awaits approval from the FCC and Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., plus one foreign telecom regulatory OK, he said. Q3 revenue in Gogo’s commercial aviation business, accounted for as discontinued operations, declined 61% from the 2019 quarter, but was up 34% from Q2. Pfizer’s announcement Monday that its COVID-19 vaccine was found to be more than 90% effective in Phase 3 trials “bodes very well for a rebound of the commercial aviation industry next year,” said Thorne.

The rapid growth of true wireless headphone sales is driving innovation in the hearables category which, enabled by SoC designs, will develop into a platform that’s less dependent on the smartphone, said a Friday SAR Insight report. “Headphones will eventually become separate untethered devices, rather than conduits for other devices,” and increased functionality will lead to new applications in entertainment and healthcare, it said. “We will see much more processing power encapsulated within the headphones than we do now,” said analyst Joe Hoffman. Services that require low latency, such as noise cancellation and wake word identification, will reside in the earbud, while the heavy processing takes place “in a mobile phone or even the cloud.” Much of the headphone ecosystem is in place as consumers have embraced true wireless earbuds and shown a willingness to “talk to their devices with digital assistants,” Hoffman said. “The earbud is a perfect place to install the biosensors for health monitoring applications, with temperature and motion sensing in the ear canal, providing more intimate and accurate detection than on the wrist,” he said.

Acer recorded a 27.3% revenue increase in Q3 from a year earlier, to 8.4 billion new Taiwan dollars ($293.7 million), including a 94.4% Chromebook revenue increase, said the PC vendor Wednesday. Profit of 2.29 billion new Taiwan dollars ($80.1 million) was the highest in nearly a decade.

Q3 revenue in DSP Group’s SmartVoice segment increased 45% from a year earlier and 82% sequentially from Q2, said CEO Ofer Elyakim on a Monday investor call. "Accelerated" demand for devices incorporating DSP’s proprietary voice user interface (VUI) SoC helped drive the segment to record-high quarterly revenue, he said. Interest in VUIs for work-from-home and remote-learning PCs and tablets is “robust,” he said. “We expect this trend to continue as the pandemic lingers.” VUI growth in connectivity products “is felt everywhere as every person needs a screen, whether it's for work, for studying, for any other activity,” he said. “In this market segment, we're seeing a much greater adoption.”

Q3 semiconductor sales increased 11% globally from Q2 and 5.8% from the 2019 quarter to $113.6 billion, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association Friday evening. The “solid” Q3 gains reflected “normal seasonal trends and increased demand for semiconductor-enabled products, but significant market uncertainty remains due to the pandemic and other macroeconomic factors,” said SIA CEO John Neuffer. September sales to the Americas rose 20.1%.

Rent-a-Center’s Q3 same-store sales grew 12.9% from the 2019 quarter due to a 71% increase in e-commerce transactions, said CEO Mitch Fadel on a Thursday investor call. The pandemic “accelerated” the finding that the “digital strategy is the right approach,” he said. The transition to e-commerce is “attracting new customers into lease-to-own,” and they tend to be “a younger demographic,” said Executive Vice President Anthony Blasquez. The supply-chain disruptions in electronics that Rent-a-Center experienced in Q2 improved “sequentially” in Q3, said Blasquez. “We feel like we're in good position to go ahead and meet the demand” for the holiday quarter, he said. Compared with supply-chain conditions in Q4 a year ago, “we're pretty close,” he said.