Now that you’ve read the product announcements from 2008 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), do you feel like there is a gap between those products and what you see in your local retail stores? Not surprisingly, your response is probably a bit mixed — here’s why.
CES was filled with vendors and manufacturers of electronic components, PC systems, mobile devices, peripherals, accessories, not to mention LCD and plasma TVs, robotic vacuums, and home theater equipment. The convergence between the computer industry products and home appliances was more noticeable than in prior years. Function continues to advance, practicality means advancement of common household items, and best of all form and design finally took major steps forward.
Top connected themes included:
- Blu-Ray dominated, as did discussion about Blue-Ray 2.0, which is to arrive Fall 2008.
- Blu-Ray means you need to have improved home theater speakers. How about MBL’s reference speakers? You won’t find this powerful audio equipment at your local retail store and it is definitely something to dream about.
- 150" plasma TV by Panasonic may be a new size record, but OLED displays on demonstration were examples of strong innovation.
Sony’s OLED display featured 11" TVs that are only 3mm thick.
- Tower PCs are still for performance gaming and just about every other use is mobile. Mobility was a pronounced a standard — from Intel’s giant spiral of notebook PCs to Sony’s mobility and wireless HD displays to in use on the show floor, like Altec Lansing using Samsung Q1 UMPCs for booth card scanning.
- Natural interaction is advancing from short-distance projectors including touch to motion encoded movies and furniture.
D-box racing chair
D-Box home theater chair works with movie motion encoding.
Sanyo short distance projector with touch.
Industry vision was still present at the show.
For example, Creative Labs did a great job at showing off future products in a central pod, with people ready to help answer every possible question. Smiles and friendly responses help to make a positive impression.
Also, Toshiba displayed a UMPC-like prototype at Intel’s booth and its own booth. The prototype featured a SSD hard drive, ran Windows Vista, touch display, and was under 2 lbs. Toshiba was also openly soliciting feedback on the enclosure and feature-set. Good for Toshiba.
Companies also took a step forward on interactive exhibit areas. Though there were plenty of the stand alone display areas where you could be shoulder to shoulder with plenty of others trying to get a peep at a product or 3 ring circus acts, the packed areas were where you could try the product out yourself with a friendly person to answer questions.
Of course, many companies chose to show off existing product lines. Yes, products you can find at the store today were on display — rows and rows of cell phones, cell phone accessories, docks for iPods or iPhones, standard PC speakers, and plenty of other products that were released in 2007. Those of us looking for new items had to sort through these to find tomorrow.
With CES 2008 welcoming in all these new innovative products, CES 2009 should be even more exciting with the continued convergence of the PC and devices world with the appliance industry.