Sprint has appointed Rob Roy as chief digital officer to advance the company’s use of online and mobile technology to improve the customer experience. Roy will focus on leveraging multi-touch personalization and marketing automation to build an end-to-end digital customer journey across all device types to deliver a seamless, omnichannel approach for acquiring the always connected customer, driving sales, and providing support.
Roy has run the e-commerce and digital businesses of the nation’s top cable companies, most recently serving as senior vice president of digital revenue for Comcast. His responsibilities there included digital strategy, product development, and sales across all digital channels for more than 22 million residential and business customers and accounts. Prior to joining Comcast, Roy led e-commerce, self-service, and digital marketing for the second largest cable company in the United States, Time Warner Cable.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) officially adopted Bluetooth 5 as the latest version of the Bluetooth core specification this week. Key updates to Bluetooth 5 include four times longer range, two times faster speed, and eight times larger broadcast message capacity, as well as improved interoperability and coexistence with other wireless technologies. Bluetooth 5 continues to advance the Internet of Things (IoT) experience by enabling simple and effortless interactions across the vast range of connected devices, the group said.
The adoption comes amid raid growth in the IoT, which ABI Research has forecasted will include 48 billion internet-enabled devices by 2021. Nearly a third of those are expected to include Bluetooth.
“The global wireless connectivity market is growing rapidly, with an anticipated 10 billion annual IC shipments by 2021,” ABI Research Analyst Andrew Zignani said. “The introduction of Bluetooth 5 will create new opportunities in various verticals of the IoT market by reducing complexity and cost and giving manufacturers greater flexibility in targeting multiple applications and use cases.”
Fitness wearable company Fitbit on Wednesday announced it bought “specific assets” from smartwatch company Pebble. Included in the purchase were “key personnel and intellectual property related to software and firmware development.” Fitbit said the buy will help it improve existing products and accelerate time to market for new wearables to expand its ecosystem. While the deal didn’t include any of Pebble’s hardware products, Pebble confirmed it will no longer manufacture or sell smartwatches.
The announcement was made just after the release of a new International Data Corporation (IDC) report that shows the overall wearables market grew 3.1 percent year over year in the third quarter despite floundering smartwatch shipments. According to the report, basic wearables – including fitness bands like Fitbit – accounted for 85 percent of the market and experiences double digit growth.
In-building wireless provider Zinwave this week announced the appointment of former Ericsson small cell and DAS expert Slavko Djukic as its new CTO. The company said Djukic will lead the development and refinement of technologies to improve the cellular and wireless experience for Zinwave’s enterprise customers.
Djukic heads to Zinwave with 18 years of experience in indoor wireless technology development. He most recently served as Ericsson’s head of strategy and solutions for small cells, DAS, and Wi-Fi. Prior to Ericsson, Djukic served in a global technical role for Corning, where he was responsible for expanding the company’s global indoor building solutions, acted as the primary technical interface for indoor wireless experts around the world, and acted as the technical lead in Corning’s acquisition of Mobile Access. Djukic also held a leadership role with Powerwave, where he built and led the technical indoor and outdoor DAS solutions organizations for North, Central, and South America.
