Qualcomm praised a U.S. trade judge’s decision Tuesday that certain iPhones violated one of its patents, but disputed another, said General Counsel Don Rosenberg. International Trade Commission Administrative Law Judge MaryJoan McNamara made an initial determination that Apple violated Section 337 of the Tariff Act in importing “certain mobile electronic devices containing processing components” and will recommend limited exclusion and cease and desist orders against Apple. Final determination is expected by July 26. “We are pleased that today ITC Judge McNamara found that Apple-designed processors infringe our ‘674 patent and will be recommending an import ban and cease and desist order to the Commission,” said Rosenberg. “The innovations we contribute to the iPhone extend well beyond a single component and Judge McNamara’s decision, along with recent infringement rulings in other U.S. and foreign courts, affirm the value of our technologies.” The patent, No. 8,063,674, improves power management in processor circuitry to reduce power consumption and improve battery life in mobile devices, said Rosenberg. Qualcomm accused circuitry in the Apple-designed A10, A11 and A12 application processors used widely in Apple devices, including in iPhones from the 7 through the most recently released models, he said. Also Tuesday, the ITC issued a determination not to review infringement complaints for six other Qualcomm patents. That's "inconsistent with the recent unanimous jury verdict finding infringement of the same patent after Apple abandoned its invalidity defense at the end of trial,” said Rosenberg. Qualcomm will seek reconsideration. Rosenberg said courts in China and Germany recently ruled that Apple infringed other Qualcomm nonstandard essential patents and issued injunctions on infringing devices. Apple didn’t comment Wednesday.

Importer Daniel M. Friedman & Associates recalled Universal rechargeable power banks for smartphones and tablets due to reports of overheating, said the Consumer Product Safety Commission Tuesday. The company received three reports of chargers overheating, including one of a house fire. No injuries were reported. The recall covers 170,500 chargers in the U.S., sold at Burlington, Kohl’s, Ross and other stores nationwide November 2016-January for about $25. Contact Friedman to arrange to return the product for a refund, said the CPSC. The recalled chargers -- in a variety of colors and shapes, including a unicorn head, a cat with sunglasses and a rainbow between two clouds -- were made by Yiwu City Fuman Leather & Accessories.

The 8K Association will host a seminar at NAB 9 a.m.-5 p.m. April 10 in rooms N221-N222 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, it said Tuesday. It will include presentations, panels and audience Q&A. Participating companies are Roam Consulting, the 8K Association, Colorfront, NHK/NEP, Panavision/Light Iron, Red Digital Cinema, Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, intoPIX, SES Video, Ateme, HDMI Licensing, Futuresource, TCL and Samsung.

Domino's and automotive commerce platform Xevo will enable pizza ordering from connected cars this year. Via Xevo Market, customers will be able to locate a restaurant, call in or tap in a Domino’s order using a vehicle’s touch screen and track it to know when it’s ready, they said. The ordering feature will be loaded on “millions” of cars late this year, they said.

Kyocera bowed what it called a military-grade 4G LTE Android smartphone Friday. The DuraForce Pro 2 phone is FirstNet OK. Three cameras -- 13 megapixel rear, 5 megapixel front and a wide-view 4K action camera -- are rated for underwater operation, including watertight side keys, said the company. The phone is available on AT&T Next for $15 over 30 months, $169 with a two-year contract or $449.

Apple followers picked up the scent of the company’s dormant AirPower wireless charging pad (see 1710060023) this week, as rumors swirled about the mat’s impending release in a staggered spring hardware rollout. Apple announced an iPad refresh Monday (see 1903180027) and updated AirPods Wednesday. Thursday, Apple watcher MacRumors spied what appeared to be a new image of an AirPower positioned with an iPhone XS and the wireless charging case for the second-generation AirPods, after Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal report that Apple finally approved production of the wireless charging accessory. Apple first teased AirPower during the September 2017 iPhone 8 launch event. MacRumors used source code from the AirPods page of Apple’s website in Australia that showed “more evidence” Apple plans to release the wireless charging mat "at some point." The updated AirPods page was intended to showcase the new optional wireless charging case on a charging mat, “but Apple never ended up featuring the image publicly,” said the publication, which found it “hidden within a CSS stylesheet.” Apple didn’t comment.

Qualcomm is eyeing a smart speaker market pegged at 220 million devices globally by 2020, Rob Saunders, director-product marketing, told us before Tuesday's announcement of a next-generation “smart audio” chipset. The company, he said, is pushing a “clear and obvious interest in voice UI,” or user interface. Interest extends to speakers with displays, cameras and audio products. Voice interface “is here to stay and across a variety of devices,” Saunders said. Music playback is the most requested smart speaker use, in some surveys as much as 70 percent. Immersive audio technology -- Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Sony’s 360 Reality Audio, based on MPEG-H 3D Audio, launched at CES -- could drive a new wave of audio, said Saunders. The chipsets have Wi-Fi 802.11ax and Bluetooth radios and can support Zigbee devices. Having compute power on the chip lets engineers move some voice and speech recognition and natural language processing from the cloud to the local device for simple commands, said Saunders. That's useful in geographies with poor internet reliability, he said, for backup local control of devices without connectivity.

Josh.ai announced collaboration with LG to let TV owners request content through some LG TV displays. The sets will be controllable via commands including “raise the volume” and “switch inputs to Roku,” said Josh.ai Tuesday. The company bills itself as a higher level voice control product.

Apple began taking orders Monday for the next generation of iPads, highlighting the “breakthrough price” of its $499 iPad Air and iPad mini starting at $399. Cellular connectivity adds $130 to the price of each. The 10.5-inch and 7.9-inch models feature Apple Pencil ($99) support and the company’s A12 Bionic chip with Apple’s Neural Engine. The company claims a 70 percent performance boost with twice the graphics capability in the iPad Air and three times the performance and nine times faster graphics than the previous-generation iPad mini. Both tablets include Apple’s developer app, Swift Playgrounds. Front and back cameras take 1080p videos. The devices will be in stores next week, and Apple’s video strategy launch event is planned for Monday.

The Illinois tech manager who urged the FTC last week to “put a stop” to manufacturer limitations on third-party repairs (see 1903150055) was “right” to call out vendors whose software updates can render devices unfixable, emailed iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens Saturday. “Oracle and IBM are tying security updates to service subscriptions in a pretty underhanded way,” said Wiens, an advocate of state right-to-repair laws who calls the FTC’s inquiry into manufacturer practices “a big deal.” Oracle declined comment and IBM didn’t respond to emails Monday. The tech manager, Timothy Pearson, singled out Nvidia when he told the agency last week that “any right to repair guidelines in today's high tech, firmware-driven world must address the issue of vendor cryptographic signatures being required to replace existing malfunctioning firmware on hardware devices.” Nvidia didn't comment.