Consumer technology sales will decline 5% this year, after rising 9% in 2021 to $127 billion, said NPD Thursday. The researcher expects declines of 4% in 2023 and 1% in 2024. Near term, NPD expects “slowing demand from the extraordinary rates we have been seeing over the last two years” due to COVID-19 pandemic lifestyle changes, said analyst Stephen Baker.

Smartphone OEMs procured 634 million AMOLED panels globally in 2021, worth $379 billion in revenue, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. Unit volume increased 27% year over year, and revenue was up 22% from 2020, it said. Flexible AMOLED smartphone panels increased by 28% to generate a 56% unit share and a 73% revenue share, said DSCC. The segment dominated due to the expected Q3 and Q4 “lift” from Apple for the iPhone 13 series and more brands launching flexible AMOLED smartphones to focus on premium smartphones in light of chip supply shortages, it said.

Wearable tech will be the top fitness trend for 2022, an American College of Sports Medicine online survey of 4,500 health and fitness professionals found. “Tech advances have made it easy for users to collect important health metrics and work with fitness professionals and health care providers to develop healthy lifestyles and increase quality of life,” said Walter Thompson, past president and lead author of the study. “Though wearable tech has been dominating the fitness industry for some time now,” said ACSM, “it is no surprise that it is also increasingly finding a place within people’s fitness routines.” Of the seven global markets in which health and fitness professionals were canvassed, China was the only country in which wearable tech didn’t place in the top 20 trends for 2022, said ACSM.

COVID-19 pandemic-fueled growth will continue next year for the wearables and wireless headsets sectors, but 5G millimeter-wave smartphone shipments won’t reach “critical mass,” reported ABI Research Tuesday on top tech trends for watch in 2022. “With more time being spent at home, the pandemic has seen an uptick in the use of wireless headsets, driven by the need for personalized audio experiences that minimize external distractions and achieve high-quality sound,” said ABI. It forecasts that wireless headset shipments will reach more than 1 billion units globally in 2026 and will lead the smart accessories market, it said. “Ecosystem momentum” for 5G mmWave “is gathering pace as a number of regions are targeting deployments,” said ABI. But even with “tangible indicators” that mmWave is beginning to appear in more smartphone models, it will be less than 5% of global sales in 2022, it said.

Eyewear company Vuzix signed an agreement with Verizon leveraging the carrier’s Ultra Wideband 5G and edge computing technologies for augmented-reality smart glasses for sports and gaming, said Vuzix Monday. They will focus on advancing the development and commercialization of delivering “immersive” AR “training experiences,” it said.

Consumer tech unit sales in the first nine weeks of Q4 fell 4% year on year, emailed NPD analyst Stephen Baker. Black Friday week had a 15% year-over-year revenue bump, while Cyber Week grew 3%, he said. Also Wednesday, Pitney Bowes reported that of 2,000 survey respondents interviewed over the past month, nearly 70% expect supply chain issues to continue into early next year, 62% throughout 2022. The most popular product category is electronics, with 30% of all consumers delaying electronics purchases, “likely due to current inventory shortages, compounded by chip shortages and the promise of discounts on high-value products” later, it said.

A Sony Life Insurance employee stole more than $154 million from the Sony Group subsidiary in May and converted the funds to bitcoins worth more than $180 million, alleged DOJ in a “civil forfeiture” complaint Monday in U.S. District Court in San Diego to “protect and ultimately return” the seized money to Sony. The employee, Rei Ishii, diverted the funds to a private account at a bank in La Jolla, California, by falsifying transaction instructions, said DOJ. Ishii was criminally charged in Japan, and all the bitcoins “traceable to the theft have been recovered and fully preserved,” it said. "We would like to express our gratitude to the U.S. and Japanese authorities, for the stolen funds being located, and recovery procedures are progressing,” emailed a Sony spokesperson Tuesday. Attempts to reach Ishii’s lawyers in Japan for comment were unsuccessful.

The “precise positioning” that 5G can render will benefit “a broad range of use cases and devices,” by bringing a “new dimension of location awareness” to IoT devices, blogged Qualcomm Technologies Friday. Though satellite-based global positioning works very well when there’s “clear line of sight” to multiple satellites, accurate positioning in “urban canyons with tall buildings” and other more challenging radio environments “needs the support of other technologies,” it said. When combining “next-level 5G connectivity” with AI, Qualcomm envisions a “wireless innovation platform” it calls the “connected intelligent edge” that leverages “on-device capabilities and analytics” that will grow stronger with “smarter, more capable devices,” it said.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., urged Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to use funding for the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act included in the FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act and additional money targeted for inclusion in legislation under House-Senate negotiation to “push back against … consolidation” in that industry. The chambers are working to produce a conference bill marrying elements of the Senate-passed U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (S-1260), which includes $52 billion to boost chipmaking, and a set of similar House-passed measures. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., abandoned efforts (see 2111180073) to include S-1260 in the FY 2022 NDAA (S-1605), which the chamber passed Wednesday 88-11. President Joe Biden is expected to sign that measure. “The semiconductor industry has undergone significant consolidation in the last decade,” which “has reduced competition” and “has harmed consumers by enabling these dominant companies to increase prices and underinvest in key capabilities, which has the effect of also reducing product innovation and product quality,” Warren said in a letter to Raimondo Thursday. Warren praised the recent FTC lawsuit to block Nvidia buying Arm from Softbank (see 2112030002), but believes “the U.S. government has other tools beyond antitrust enforcement that could increase competition, protect consumers and workers, and promote supply-chain resiliency.” She cited S-1260’s proposed $19 billion in FY 2022 and $5 billion in annual funding for FY 2023-26 for incentivizing U.S. chip manufacturing.

Pixelworks signed an “independent software vendor agreement” with MediaTek to collaborate on advanced visual display processing support for smartphone OEMs in the production of high-end 5G handsets, based on MediaTek's Dimensity 5G “open resource architecture” platform, said the companies Thursday.