On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

The Switch might have been a surprise bestseller, but Nintendo is not resting on its laurels-- according to the Wall Street Journal, next year will see the release of an update of the home/portable gaming machine.

The "suppliers and others with direct knowledge of the plan" acting the WSJ's sources have little in terms of details on the update, other than describing it as a means to "maintain sales momentum." As such, one can imagine Nintendo taking the incremental route, perhaps by replacing the display for a more battery-friendly (maybe OLED, if one is feeling optimistic?) option.

Samsung follows on the IFA 2018 debut of the Q900R 8K HDR QLED TV series with the announcement of a release window-- October 2018, with customers getting a choice of 65-, 75- and 85-inch models.

Described by the company as "the most advanced TV on the market," the Q900R promises to "to change the way we view content in our homes forever.” It is the first 8K resolution (7680 x 4320) TV to hit the general market and features QLED technology, essentially a means to add quantum dots to an LCD panel in order to enhance the colours and bring black levels to near OLED levels.

Further enhancing images are HDR 10+ technology, peak brightness reaching 4000 nits and various 8K-ready features with names such as Real 8K Resolution, Q HDR 8K and Quantum Processor 8K. The final feature is interesting, since it promises to upscale content from any source to "a level compatible with 8K regardless of the original source quality or format.” This should be useful, since native 8K resolution content is somewhat hard to come by, at least so far.

The Tile Bluetooth tracker portfolio gets an update in the shape of two trackers-- the Tile Mate and Tile Pro, both offering replaceable coin cell batteries and a subscription service covering said batteries.

The Tile Mate has a Bluetooth range of 45m, and promises to be 100% louder compared to the previous version. Meanwhile the Tile Pro has 90m range, and is 50% louder. A small door in the back covers the battery, specifically a CR1632 coin cell battery for the Tile Mate and a CR2032 for the Tile Pro.

According to IDC, the global smart home device market is set to grow by 31% in 2018 to reach 643.9 million units shipped, before growing to reach nearly 1.3 billion devices by 2022 at a CAGR of 20.8%.

The analyst puts smart speakers, video entertainment products, connected lighting, smart thermostats and home monitoring/security products under the "smart home device" umbrella. The fastest growing product category is, perhaps unsurprisingly, smart speakers, accounting for 100m units in 2018 and 230.5m by 2022 with a 5-year CAGR of 39.1%.

"While dedicated smart speakers with built-in voice assistants will be prevalent throughout the forecast, we're already seeing a notable shift in this market," the analyst adds. "Many new types of devices, both inside and outside the home, now include built-in voice assistants. Not only do these help to increase the number of touch points available to end users, but it also helps each assistant to grow by expanding reach and gaining a deeper understanding of what, when, and how users approach various tasks."