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

US-Chinese startup EcoFlow presents an interesting take on the power pack-- the River Bank, a battery solution with a stackable design, allowing one to add more power or ports as they require.

The main River Bank module is a 99Wh battery with x4 Quick Charge USB ports (x2 USB-A, x2 USB-C) and a 10W Qi surface able to wirelessly charge up to x5 devices simultaneously. According to the company it has enough power to charge a laptop twice or a phone 9-15 times. Users can add even more power through addition of one of two submodules, one featuring a car jump-starter and the other an AC jack.

According to Strategy Analytics, global tablet shipments are down by -7% Y-o-Y on Q1 2018, even as major vendors such as Apple and Amazon manage to increase shipments through lower hardware prices.

In fact, Q1 2018 iPad shipments show 2% Y-o-Y growth-- or -31% Q-o-Q decline, if due to comparison to a strong Q4 2017-- reaching 9.1m units, driving Apple tablet market share to 23.4%. Education remains a "good opportunity" for Apple, since schools often use both PCs and tablets for different use cases. As such it comes to no surprise the company is launching the basic iPad with Pencil refresh for Q2 2018, just in time for the school buying season.

A "global strategic alliance" with 3 Group owner CK Hutchison brings Xiaomi to European markets, with products initially available at 3 Group stores in Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and the UK.

As the two companies put it, the alliance helps accelerate the international expansion of Xiaomi. CK Hutchinson counts over 17700 retail and telecom stores worldwide, around 130 million active mobile customers and 140 million retail customers. As such, the partnership also brings Xiaomi products in Watson Fortress, Superdrug and Kruidvat stores in Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands, and the Chinese company will be collaborating with CK Hutchinson operator channels in European markets.

Sonos sends out press invites for an event taking place in San Francisco on 6 June 2018-- one featuring an image a hand looking to choose from multiple remotes with the tagline "you're better than this."

What the event will actually involve is anyone's guess, but if the grapevine is to be believed the answer is a successor to either the Playbar or Playbase. According to an FCC listing unearthed last month by Variety, Sonos is working on product codenamed model S14, "a high-performance all-in-one home theater smart speaker and part of Sonos’ home sound system.”