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

According to IDC, global smartphone shipments are up by 0.8% Y-o-Y (or 8.1% Q-o-Q) in Q3 2019 to 358.3 million units-- a reversal of 7 consecutive quarters of decline, and "enough" to bring the industry to positive growth.

However the growth drivers are primarily India, the leader of the emerging markets, and China. The most populous nation on Earth sees more consolidation towards the top 5 brands, and all said brands are currently preparing for "Singles' Day", or 11.11, the Chinese equivalent of Black Friday for shopping in the US and, increasingly, Europe.

LG might be pushing flexible OLEDs with the rollable Signature TV R, but a recent patent filing suggests the Korean company plans another take on the technology in the shape of a foldable OLED TV.

First spotted by Dutch news site LetsGoDigital, the patent describes an ultrawide display able to fold up into a compact space when not in use. As such it is similar in concep to the aforementioned Signature TV R (which rolls up when not in use), only using the foldable technology previously seen in smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X.

Back in January 2019 Alieware launched the Area-51m, a gaming laptop featuring upgradeable internals, a first from the Dell-owned company in 20 years. Now said upgrade kits are actually available, at least for the GPU.

The upgrade kits allow customers to replace the included graphics card with either an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 or 2080, the same GPUs found in the highest-end Area-51m model. As such, they are aimed at buyers of the less powerful versions of the laptop. Each kit consists of the GPU in the proprietary Dell Graphics Form Factor (DGFF), together with a CryoTech 2.0 cooling system and a matching power supply. Installation by Dell technician is also included.

MSI launches a 15-inch addition to the Modern laptop range-- the Modern 15, designed for less demanding lifestyle tasks and entertainment applications featuring up to the latest 10th gen Intel Core i7 processors.

As well as a 14nm Comet Lake processor, the Modern 15 offers NVMe SSD storage (with x2 slots available) and the option of discrete Nvidia GeForce MX250 graphics with 2GB GDDR5 memory. The design looks fairly premium, with an aluminium and sandblasted black-coated chassis, thin bezels offering up to 90% screen to body ratio, 1080p IPS display and a backlit keyboard with 1.5mm key travel.