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

Small businesses wanting to easily keep track of office supplies get an Amazon option with the Dash Smart Shelf, a connected smart scale able to automatically order supplies when they are running low.

Designed to be placed in the supply room, the Dash Smart Shelf senses the weight of objects such as pens or printer paper placed on top. Should said objects start running low, the shelf can either automatically reorder the items in question or send a notification to whoever takes care of supplies in order to place an order. Amazon also promises the Dash Smart Shelf also avoids automatic reorders, should items be simply temporarily removed.

The cloud gaming market is to ramp up in concert with the expansion of 5G and the arrival of new services, ABI Research says, bringing growth from both existing and new gamers moving to service fees instead of up front hardware costs.

The analyst predicts active cloud gaming users will total over 42 million by 2024, with overall market revenues growing to $4.5 billion at a CAGR of 61.7% for the 2018-2024 forecast period. However the cloud gaming market still represents a "relatively small" segment of the overall gaming landscape throughout the forecast.

“Google Stadia has brought a great deal of attention to cloud gaming, but the market has a deeper history and already has a growing list of companies operating in the space, serving both consumers and business customers, including telcos and pay-TV operators," the analyst says. "While technical and behavioral aspects of the market are in a much better place today, the greatest competitive hurdle remains the incumbent gaming platforms, which will lead to a more protracted transition to the cloud."

Apple quietly releases the 16-inch MacBook Pro-- a laptop the iPhone maker designs as nothing less than "the world's best pro notebook," featuring a brighter 16-inch Retina Display and a keyboard with a "refined scissor mechanism."

Aimed primarily at professional customers such as developers, photographers and artists, the new MacBook Pro carries up to 9th gen Intel Core i9 (octa-core) processors together with up to 64GB RAM, 8T SSD and dual graphics in the shape of Intel UHD Graphics 630 and a choice of AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series GPU with up to 8GB GDDR6 VRAM. The result is a machine better able for GPU-intensive tasks, particularly in the highest-end configurations.

Philips announces a small smart TV designed for use in the kitchen-- the 24-inch Android TV featuring Google Assistant (aka the 6000 series) allowing for hands-free control while viewing recipes, playing music or watching content.

The TV features the Android TV platform and integrated dual far-field echo-canceling microphones, providing voice control via Google Assistant. As such, it should be ideal for customers wanting to follow cooking videos step-by-step and control the viewing experience by voice, including volume, pause/play and rewind/fast-forward. In addition, they can control compatible smart home devices or check on the weather and traffic, all with the power of their voice.