The launch of a new iPhone model historically has caused “major depreciation” in the resale value of older iPhones, said uSell.com, which calls itself the “leading online marketplace for used gadgets.” With Tuesday’s expected launch of the iPhone 6, uSell.com examined thousands of used iPhone sales on its platform after the launch of previous new models, it said. It found that two weeks after a new iPhone launch, old iPhones lose about 11 percent of their resale value. After four weeks, they depreciate about 15 percent, it said. By the seventh week, an old iPhone will have lost 21 percent of its value, it said.

The more smart watches that hit the market -- from consumer electronics companies trying to ignite sales and luxury watchmakers trying to protect their turf -- the more industry watchers are questioning the need for the category. All eyes are on Apple’s announcement Tuesday in the hopes that Apple gives the world a shiny, compelling reason to buy an extra gadget in the way it created the smartphone. In a blog post Friday, NPD Connected Intelligence analyst Eddie Hold said smart watches haven’t added value to date. “It doesn’t do anything that my smartphone doesn’t already handle with ease,” Hold said. “It’s just another gadget (and a rather bulky one at that) that I need to remember to charge at night.” Smart watch companies hope consumers are more jazzed about the technology than cynical observers. Timex has jumped into the smart watch market and Guess linked up with Martian Watches last month, while at IFA last week Asus, LG, Samsung and Sony rolled out their own versions.

The FCC opened a docket seeking comment on mobile device theft, supplementing work by the Working Group on Mobile Device Theft Prevention, formed under its Technological Advisory Council. The docket number is 14-143. “The new docket will allow industry and consumers to share information to supplement the efforts of the working group,” said an agency public notice Friday (http://bit.ly/1qlqhHB).

The decision to vacate the ruling requiring a warrant to access cellphone location data doesn’t indicate the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will ultimately reverse the original decision, American Civil Liberties Union Legislative Counsel Chris Calabrese told us Friday. “The full 11th Circuit will now take up this question, and we are hopeful that they agree with the original three-judge panel that police must get a warrant before collecting sensitive and detailed cellphone location data,” he said. Privacy and civil liberties advocates had hailed the ruling (CD June 13 p9) as providing some clarity in the legislatively stalled debate over the right to privacy of electronic data. “The Fourth Amendment privacy protections for our cellphone location information are an exceptionally important issue that courts across the country are just starting to address,” Calabrese said.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau Friday rejected a waiver request from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission asking that its use of frequencies 159.045 MHz and 159.075 MHz as mobile relay repeater transmit channels be granted co-primary rather than secondary status. The Pennsylvania commission used the frequencies for 40 years before recently discovering they had secondary status, the bureau said (http://bit.ly/1u7bhOl). “We are not persuaded by the Turnpike’s hyperbolic claim that secondary operation ‘has technically, financially and operationally placed immense challenges and impediments on the Turnpike’s present and future use of its system,'” the bureau said. “The claim that -- after 40 years of apparently interference-free operation -- it is going to have to cease operations on a moment’s notice is wholly speculative.”

Odin Mobile urged the FCC to approve its compliance plan, allowing it to start offering Lifeline service to blind Americans, in a filing posted by the FCC Thursday in docket 09-197. “Unfortunately, despite meetings, letters and the support of blind organizations ... Odin Mobile’s compliance plan, which was filed in December 2012, has not yet been approved,” the carrier said (http://bit.ly/1uCdShH).

Though not an exhibitor at IFA, Microsoft chose the second of two IFA media days Thursday to hold its first global event for Nokia Lumia smartphones since taking over the Nokia Devices and Services business in the spring (CD April 28 p15). The venue, a weddings and conference center called Kaufhaus Jandorf, was seven miles east of the Messe Berlin fairgrounds, so the event’s 10 a.m. start time ensured that no one attending the Microsoft event could also make it to an 11 a.m. Samsung news conference at Hall 7.3 on the IFA grounds. In the end, Samsung devoted its news conference to Ultra HD TVs and home appliances, not to smartphones and tablets. But Chris Weber, Microsoft corporate vice president-mobile device sales, missed no opportunity at the event to compare smartphones from competitors Apple and Samsung unfavorably with Nokia Lumia devices. The rival products carry “an expense premium,” Weber said. Photos taken in low light with a Galaxy phone “were not worth the PowerPoint space” when compared with similar shots taken with a new Lumia 830 phone, he said. Microsoft hailed the Lumia 830 as an “affordable flagship that delivers high-end innovations such as optical image stabilization and PureView imaging to more people.”

Pioneer will team with Treasure Data, a supplier of cloud-based data collection services, on a business alliance to develop telematics data services for the global automotive industry, the companies said Thursday. Using the Treasure Data cloud service, Pioneer will release new data and analytics-based services for automobile manufacturers and related businesses, including dealers, repair shops, insurance and rental car companies, they said. They also plan to “drive new research” on more effective use of automotive telematics data, they said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1lCfcRS).

Qualcomm said its Qualcomm Atheros subsidiary expanded distribution with Arrow Electronics for the U.S. and China and Codico for Europe in an effort to broaden support for QCA4002/4004, its low-power Wi-Fi platform designed for the Internet of Things. Qualcomm Atheros is offering an IoT development kit to enable low-power Wi-Fi in a range of connected products including light bulbs, home automation devices and security systems, it said in a Thursday news release (http://bit.ly/1oHVBuA).

In North America, LTE technology provided 33 percent of the total 391 million mobile connections for the first half of 2014, a 4G Americas report found. North America has 45 percent of all LTE connections worldwide; Asia Pacific has 36 percent; and Western Europe, more than 13 percent, it said Thursday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1r93FWz). Research for the report was done by Ovum, 4G Americas said. North America has an LTE penetration rate of nearly 36 percent, it said. Western Europe’s penetration rate is 8 percent, and Asia Pacific has a nearly 3 percent penetration rate, it said. Subscriber demand for mobile broadband data applications and services in the U.S. and Canada is driven in part by innovations in regulatory policy, new advanced LTE networks and significant smartphone penetration, 4G Americas said. Although LTE subscriptions remain low in Latin America, they're growing rapidly, with 4.8 million connections at the end of Q2 2014, “representing an annual increase of 900 percent at the end of the second quarter,” it said. Global LTE subscriptions grew 179 percent year-over-year from 2012 to 2013, it said. They're expected to grow 95 percent from 2013 to 2014 to reach 386 million subscriptions, it said.