Microsoft’s agreement with the green group As You Sow to expand consumers’ options by the end of 2022 to repair their own devices (see 2110070030 or 2110070032) “is a step in the right direction for a major tech company,” emailed iFixit Policy Director Kerry Sheehan Thursday: “We'll be keeping a close eye on Microsoft to make sure they're living up to their commitments.” President Joe Biden’s July 9 executive order on tech competition “encouraged” the FTC to use its “statutory rulemaking authority” to thwart “unfair anticompetitive restrictions on third-party repair or self-repair.”

Microsoft agreed to expand consumers’ options to repair their own devices by the end of 2022, said As You Sow Thursday. The green group agreed in exchange to withdraw its shareholder resolution urging the company to liberalize its third-party repair practices, it said.

NPD added the mobile phone category to its U.S. point-of-sale retail tracking service, noting sales through national retailers returned to growth in 2021's first half, after declining in 2019 and 2020, said the company Wednesday. January-to-June cellphone sales rose 2% year over year, down 6% for the first half of 2020 and down 12% for the first half of 2019, it said. “The mobile phone landscape is saturated, and consumers face less choice and fewer reasons to trade up,” said Ian Hamilton, president-tech sector. Growth returned in the first half “due to pent-up demand from the pandemic,” said analyst Brad Akyuz. Further growth is expected “as a result of expanding product and service offerings through new carrier partnerships,” he said.

MediaTek’s new Filogic series of chipsets, targeted for broadband routers, mesh systems, enterprise access points and retail routers, has Wi-Fi 6 and 6E support, and “ushers in a new era of smart Wi-Fi solutions” with “extreme” speeds, low latency and peak power efficiency, said the chipmaker Thursday. Devices using Wi-Fi 6 connections in the 6 GHz band “are designed to make use of wide 160 MHz channels and uncongested bandwidth” for rendering “multi-gigabit, low latency Wi-Fi,” it said. The Wi-Fi Alliance picked MediaTek as the Wi-Fi 6E test bed in January, said the company.

New and existing Booth Mobile customers who preorder the Celero5G smartphone online through Oct. 31 can get it for $279 including talk, text and data for a year, plus a specially designed phone case, said Dish Network Thursday. The Celero5G will be available at Boost Mobile-branded retail locations and in national retail later this fall, it said. “The Celero5G fills a void in the mobile device market, providing an affordable 5G option that's packed with the features customers want,” said Dish. It has a 6.52-inch screen, four cameras, 36 hours of battery life and 4GB RAM/ 64GB ROM memory that's customizable with an SD card up to 2 TB, it said.

Fifth-generation wireless continues to grow, Micron's chief told investors. Sales rose 25% in mobile in fiscal Q4 ended Sept. 2 from the year-ago quarter. “We expect overall smartphone unit sales to grow this year, with sales of over 500 million 5G mobile phones forecasted” globally, said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra Tuesday. The typical 5G smartphone features more than 50% higher DRAM content and double the NAND content of a 4G phone, he said. “We expect 5G and AI to drive new innovation in applications such as AI-optimized video capture and editing that will fuel DRAM and NAND content growth for years.”

Apple and Intel captured the top two slots in Q2 revenue share for tablet apps processors, while Apple and MediaTek were unit share leaders, reported Strategy Analytics Tuesday. “Robust” average selling prices spurred 17% growth to $737 million, despite an 8% unit decline, the first such decrease in five quarters, attributable to tough comparisons with Q2 a year earlier, said SA. But unit shipments were 23% higher than in 2019's pre-pandemic Q2, it said.

AT&T continues to be the most aggressive among major carriers “in terms of overall promotionality” behind the iPhone 13, reported MoffettNathanson Tuesday. The analyst firm teamed with data analytics company Navi to probe advertised iPhone 13 promotional offers, finding “a stark strategic divide between Verizon and T-Mobile, on the one hand, and AT&T on the other,” it said. Verizon's and T-Mobile’s best offers on the iPhone 13 series are exclusively available to premium unlimited customers, “who are, in effect, paying more for service in order to offset the cost of a free or almost-free device.” AT&T offers “its most lucrative promotions to all unlimited customers,” including those on the lowest tiers, MoffettNathanson said. Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s best offers “generally remain targeted at switchers,” while AT&T’s “remain focused on retention,” it said.

Market leader Sony captured 41% share of the smartphone image sensor business valued at more than $7 billion in global first-half revenue, reported Strategy Analytics Monday. Industry revenue grew more than 10% year over year, it said. The top three vendors -- Sony, Samsung and OmniVision -- had more than 80% share collectively. Introduction of high-resolution and large-format image sensors from major vendors is expected to boost market “revenue opportunities,” said analyst Stephen Entwistle: But “supply fluctuations” of high- and low-pixel image sensors “continue to challenge the growth prospects.”

IFixit is “not mad, just disappointed,” after its iPhone 13 Pro teardown showed the smartphone got low grades for repairability, said the right-to-repair advocacy company Monday. The “bad news” is about Apple’s “newest parts-pairing problem,” it said. “If you replace your screen, Apple kills your Face ID” facial-recognition authentication feature, “unless they control the repair,” said iFixit. “We swapped sensors and front-facing camera hardware across multiple brand-new units, restarting each one, but nothing worked. Fixing your own iPhone screen could trap you years in the past, in the passcode times.” IFixit says an Apple-licensed tech told it that the iPhone maker is treating the problem as a bug “to be fixed in a future iOS release.” If Apple “withholds a major feature from anybody who doesn’t take their busted screen straight to them,” that would mark a “very, very bad sign from a company that moves the tech market,” it said. Apple didn’t comment.