Apple sold 150 million iPhones last year, each carrying dozens of parts made by other companies. That's why Apple is a perennial kingmaker among component manufacturers: Each time the company releases a model, some suppliers end up winners and others losers.

The introduction of Apple's smart watch hardly surprised the journalist and analyst community by revealing anything truly "revolutionary" or unexpected. However, the wearable tech device launch next year is still expected to shake up the nascent sector's supply chain.

The first voluntary U.S. sustainability standard for small appliances and floor care appliances has been released, intended to help portable and floor care appliance manufacturers evaluate the environmental sustainability of their products.

The share of stand-alone Bluetooth ICs will be about 40 percent by the end of 2014, down from 42 percent in 2013, and by the end of 2019 that share will remain at 40 percent.

The largest private employer in China and one of the biggest supply chain manufacturers in the world, Foxconn, announced it will soon start using robots to help assemble devices at its several sprawling factories across China. Apple, one of Foxconn's biggest partners to help assemble its iPhones, iPads, will be the first company to use the new service.

A year ago, China's light-emitting diode industry seemed like a case study of industrial policy gone awry. Hundreds of factories built all over eastern China, often with lavish clean energy subsidies from state-owned banks and local governments, were operating at half capacity. The share prices of LED manufacturers were plunging. Now demand is surging, and the Chinese manufacturers suddenly find their factories running at full tilt, churning out LEDs faster and cheaper than global rivals.

E2open has acquired Serus Corp., vendor of a supply-chain management software platform for high-tech companies.