Global smartphone original design manufacturing and electronics manufacturing services assembly shipments fell 13.8 percent year-on-year in Q4 on weakening market demand, IDC reported Thursday. Shipments rose 2.1 percent sequentially, it said. Slowness in Q4 was due to “conservative supply and weakening demand” as the industry migrates to larger screen sizes, said analyst Sean Kao. “Chinese OEMs accelerated their inventory cleanup of old models while staying conservative on orders for new models,” said Kao. Component suppliers were also cautious due to fast-changing specs, contributing to an “unusual shipment trend” throughout the supply chain up to the Chinese New Year, he said. Trends to watch out for in upcoming quarters are the continued shift to full-screen smartphones and improving face-recognition technology, IDC said. Total smartphone shipments will not likely grow significantly until low-end smartphone specs stabilize in Q2, said the analyst. Midrange and low-end devices are likely to be a key segment for vendors as emerging-market demand becomes a primary growth driver, he said.

Interested parties have until April 27 to file oppositions to a March petition for review by the Rural Wireless Association seeking changes to the FCC’s Mobility Fund II challenge procedures (see 1803290043). Oppositions are due April 27, replies May 7, both in docket 10-90, a Thursday notice said.

RapidSOS and Uber said they're partnering on a wireless 911 location-sharing pilot. Tests are starting in Denver, the companies said in a news release Thursday. When an Uber driver or rider initiates a 911 call using the Uber app's 911 assistance feature, 911 operators will receive the user's location from the RapidSOS NG911 Clearinghouse, the companies said. RapidSOS said the technology could offer a solution for problems 911 operators sometimes have accurately locating wireless 911 callers. Applications like Uber “locate users with a device-based approach that relies on multiple sources of information available on a device (GPS, WiFi access points, etc.),” the companies said. “Corroborating location information across multiple sources increases accuracy, especially in environments where a single source may be compromised. While using the Uber app, this information is available immediately on the device, so that the location will be available to 911 even before the call is received.”

CommScope and Ericsson said tests they ran show their equipment designed for the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) band is interoperable. The two said this was one of the first successful interoperability tests using the Wireless Innovation Forum’s release 1.2 specifications. Tests showed CommScope’s spectrum access system and Ericsson’s radio infrastructure with CBRS spectrum support can work together. “Ericsson offers a comprehensive portfolio of CBRS network solutions that will help operators of all sizes deploy in this spectrum quickly and successfully,” said Paul Challoner, Ericsson vice president-network product solutions. “Additional milestones need to be reached for CBRS to become a reality, but we are pleased to complete interoperability testing with CommScope as part of the developmental process.”

NTIA said it signed a five-year cooperative research and development agreement with the University of Colorado Boulder to develop a wireless test bed. NTIA’s Boulder-based Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) is to work with the university to install spectrum monitoring sensors throughout the Boulder campus, “with data to be available to both parties for spectrum management research,” NTIA said Thursday in a news release. “The project will enable measurement of wireless spectrum and system occupancy and spectrum utilization, testing and evaluation of spectrum sharing scenarios, and validation of radio wave propagation models,” NTIA said in the release. “It also will help to develop early interference detection, interference mitigation, and spectrum forensics techniques.” The test bed will "provide analytics on how real-world spectrum sharing could work," said NTIA Administrator David Redl.

CTIA officials urged the FCC to provide additional clarity in its public notice, set for a vote by commissioners Tuesday, on rules for upcoming 24 and 28 GHz auctions (see 1803270052). CTIA met Monday with Wireless Bureau staff, said a filing in docket 18-85. “CTIA urged the Commission to consider the implications for the agency and auction participants if the Commission’s anti-collusion rules apply across the two auctions and include applicants in both,” the group said. “We also discussed opening bids and reserve prices, incumbent licenses in the 28 GHz band, and encumbered licenses in the 24 GHz band, urging the Commission to ensure that the Draft Spectrum Frontiers Auctions Public Notice is sufficiently clear for the public to respond to the questions raised therein.” CTIA also urged the FCC to start auctioning other high-frequency bands needed for 5G, especially the 37, 39 and 47 GHz bands. The Competitive Carriers Association, meanwhile, reported on a meeting with Will Adams, aide to Commissioner Brendan Carr. As the FCC takes up the auction notice it “must protect against the anti-competitive effects of a first-mover advantage in critical [millimeter-wave] bands, and ensure that all carriers are afforded an opportunity to access 5G spectrum at auction,” CCA said. CCA also “encouraged the FCC to expeditiously address remaining barriers to infrastructure siting processes to further deployment of next-generation and 5G technologies.”

The Rural Wireless Association said the FCC should investigate why AT&T didn’t file required coverage data for a 700 MHz license in the cellular market area serving the Wade Hampton, Alaska, market. In March, the FCC rejected an RWA challenge of a January waiver for the license (see 1803050046). One of the requirements in the waiver was that AT&T meet a 70 percent geographic-area construction requirement by June 13, 2017. RWA said AT&T recently filed data at the FCC “reflecting coverage existing as of the date of that filing instead of reflecting the coverage existing 10 months earlier.” Regardless of why AT&T offered data as of the wrong date, “its failure to comply with the Commission’s directive is unacceptable and the Commission must take immediate action to require AT&T to comply with the requirement to submit coverage information as of June 13, 2017 or declare that the waiver conditions have not been met,” RWA said in docket 16-335. AT&T didn't comment.

AT&T and Crown Castle said they signed a new agreement “simplifying and expanding” their long-term leasing agreement. “Under the new agreement, leasing management and operations are streamlined to improve the efficiency and flexibility under which AT&T can deploy new technologies and increase network capacity,” said a joint news release Wednesday. “These changes will enable AT&T to speed up the deployment of 5G technologies and the execution of our FirstNet build.”

The Vivo X20 Plus UD smartphone and its under-display fingerprint sensor is “well ahead of Apple’s face recognition technology,” ABI reported Wednesday. Apple abandoned the sapphire sensor in the iPhone X in favor of Face ID, but the company “may now be forced to return to fingerprint sensors in the next iPhone,” said analyst Dimitrios Pavlakis. More banking and payment service providers are employing fingerprint sensing, which is five times as difficult to spoof as face recognition, said Pavlakis.

FCC certification for Energous wireless charging technology clears the way for manufacturers to design “robust products” that can be waterproof and free of charging ports, a company spokeswoman emailed us. The WattUp near-field transmitter, running at 900 MHz, was certified under Part 18 post-Underwriters Laboratory testing, the company said Monday. The near-field transmitters are a charging solution for small consumer electronics, the spokeswoman said. In December, the FCC OK'd the firm's mid-field transmitter (see 1712270024), which also operates in the 900 MHz band. A fitness band with WattUp receiver technology could come with a near-field transmitter, enabling contact-based charging without a wired connection, the representative said. A mid-field transmitter, she said, can be incorporated into a computer monitor or smart speaker, “where you could then charge that fitness band at-a-distance, without having to take it off your wrist.”