CES 2011 - A brief summary of innovations

Attendees: 140,000(international attendees 30000)

Companies: 2,500

Approx products displayed: 20,000+

Quite a few new technologies were on display at the CES and most exciting categories were in mobile computing. Here is a very short summary of the products on display and the technologies of interest that are powering them.

Tablets/SmartPhones:

This was definitely the year of the tablet. Over 80 tablets announced and launched at the CES. And Motorola not only take home the best category award for Motorola Xoom and also was the “best in show” product. Same with Motorola Atrix 4G - won the best smartphone. The overall tablet trend in the show was large screens, customized OS & high speed connectivity. Some had innovative form factors notably the Dell tablet that can swivel and becomes a touch-tablet or a keyboard-laptop Inspiron Duo. Or the Samsung tablet with slideout keyboard. Some tablets have 4G/LTE planned at launch. Toshiba had their tablet on display in a glass showcase so none was allowed to touch it – possibly some new functions on the way. The already out Samsung Galaxy also had a lot of buzz in 7” category, with many media-apps for their SmartTVs running on it. It also has 4G and wi-fi versions now. There were also quite a few low cost tablet options mainly from companies in China & Taiwan running various flavors of Android. However, the major software differentiator here was who is running Honeycomb version of Google made for tablets?  Answer: Motorola, LG & Toshiba. Some tablets shown will run the Microsoft Corp's Windows 7 PC software (Samsung slideout) and RIM showed off their business-focused 4G PlayBook tablet. Other tablets were from ASUS, Acer, MSI and many more.

LTE Chipsets: LG announced that they have been working with VZW on LTE since 2008 and showcased a few of their LTE offerings. Wireless module WM300 based on L2000 chipset – identified as world’s 1^st LTE chipset. There were quite a few USB LTE modems from Sierra and Pantech as well. For now, only plug-in laptop modems can take advantage LTE, but at the show, Verizon showed off smart phones from Motorola (Bionic), LG, HTC and Samsung smartphones that use LTE.

   

Windows on mobile chipsets: Microsoft announced that they will support Windows on ARM and NVIDIA.  So expect a longer battery life from windows.  To counter the tablet threats, Intel and AMD are putting graphics capabilities in the GPU for faster performance on games etc

Connected Appliances:  

Everything in home appliances appears now to have a net connection and a display. The fridge that can do energy management for the entire home. Can offer your recipes of choice, can show you weather and other stats like how many times you opened the fridge door (energy mgmt tips). There were also washers and dryers that can tell you to delay the cycle till the smart grid rates drop to minimum and can show you many tips pulled from the clouds. All clouds. The issue here may be all appliance companies, utility companies, TV/cable companies want to do that. One or two distribution/pricing/GTM strategies will eventually need to emerge.

3D TVs/3D displays/3D LCDs/Mobile 3D:

This was anticipated and 3D TVs amassed a lot of attention at the show. The quality has improved multiple times e.g. LG’s no flicker 3D. They also showcased 3D without glasses. This technology is making inroads outside TVs now and we could see 3D in laptop and mobile displays. There is a lot of speculation about if 3D will really take off but the 3D technology without glasses shows some promise based on the response there. The bulky, expensive, battery-powered glasses are also paving way for light, inexpensive glasses.

  

Convergence/Media Everywhere: A few companies are trying to solve the problem of viewing user’s owned media from any of their owned devices. Qualcomm’s Skifta showcased this based on their Skifta app (similar to DLNA). Motorola showcased Medios and mover solutions. The solutions also target cloud based contents like netflix. Major push was seen on TV makers trying to solve that problem as well.

TV based video-calling: TV/chipset makers in association with VOIP companies showcased this technology in action. Notably Sony was demo’ing Skype video calling on their TVs and Intel demo’ed Cisco Umi running their chipsets. Services to be ordered from these respective providers (in this case, Skype and Umi). Question-How many services/bills can customers handle? Expect some service consolidation here…

SmartTVs: Samsung used their keynote to show this product through a story setting interspersed during their CEO address. High quality TV that can pull the contents from all internet providers, has widgets and apps.  Also, saw a few more SmartTVs from TCL that support Kinect like interface for (or instead of) their remote. User can sit in front of the TV and with wave of hands can scroll, select, push, pause – everything that you can do with a remote. User would need to get used to some new gestures.

Technologies to reduce “Driver Distraction”: Hyundai showcased a technology that uses camera/sensors based “obstacle detections” for alerting a distracted driver. The demo was as you are “distracted” (call/sms), the sensors detect a vehicle in front, car brakes by itself or tightens your seatbelts w/ an audible alert.

Form Factor Trends

How many screens do we need in our lives? SmartPhone, TV, Laptop, Tablet and ..?

 

Early Jan 2011, I had an opportunity to attend an awesome panel discussion at CES about “Gadgets Everywhere and the Role of Wireless”. The discussion brought forth some interesting predictions of future that got me thinking. The panel seemed to agree that the tablet is the 4^th and “final” screen in user’s lives. Well, that “final” screen sounds like a familiar phrase as experts indeed had called mobile (or smartphone) as the final screen few years ago. That leaves us with a question: really how many screens do users need?

For the past few months, I have been using all the 4 screens in my life. Let’s for a moment, leave the TV screen aside - as an inevitable screen for every family to watch and enjoy contents together. That leaves us with 3 “personal” screens. So do we need them all?

Recently, when I started using the tablet, I had thought I will use the other 2 devices a bit “less”, paving the way for zeroing down on the best 2 of 3 that fulfilled all my needs. However, interestingly I did find a place for all 3 personal screens. and boy, did they fit their place each so well! I started using the tablet for a few applications where the laptop and smartphone were “less efficient” or simply “inadequate”. For example, the tablet was still as portable as the Smatphone but made the content-watching much better, with their bigger and better screens. The ready-to-consume contents viz. Books, Videos/movies and Pics play and look much better on the tablets. And unlike the heavier laptop, it did make me free from “desk” and entered the other rooms of my home. You could hold it like a “bedside book” for reading. You could make it stand for playing a movie. But the most amazing thing with the touch interface is that it almost minimizes the learning curve for non-computer-literates like my 3year old son or my parents. All they had to do to watch a content was to simply touch what they want to play. That for me is cool. Now the “Intent” takes over “methods”. This is how it should always have been. No need to read user manual or need any hand holding. Someone recently said at a conference: “The user manual is merely a list of design failures”. So true! If a consumer facing product’s interface is intuitive, it should just unbox and be ready to serve.

So are tablets already to take over laptops or smartphones? Not so fast. Like many other people, I am not a tablet-typer. So it is tough to create any docs or contents with tablets. Nor do they have a good MS-Office or productivity app suite for my office work. (It may change once the Googles or Apples of the world will solve that or if MS Windows tablets take off again). So yes, tablets are here to stay but not ready to kick the laptops out yet. There is a ton of opportunity to make the tablet more usable and enjoyable with software solutions (apps). That’s where the innovation will continue happening. With its portability combined with HW components like GPS and other HW components providing user context, the possibilities are endless.

There is a prediction that the tablets will become the only “away from home” consumption device. I agree. TV will remain unchallenged at home. Laptops will be around for a while at work and work-from-home. I especially like the idea that the tablet will be the device to enjoy while “leaning back” (content consumption) and laptop is for “leaning forward” (content creation). To take this idea further, TV will be a device to enjoy with family while relaxing “feet up” and the smartphone is a device to use while on the go (“feet on”). Unless we stop getting in some of these positions, all these screens are here to stay. So yes, my guess is 4 is a maximum. Only way from here is to go down to 3 or may be a 2 with some more evolutions of HW/SW. What’s your take?