CES 2010 was fun. The International Consumer Electronics Show (its full name) is the world's largest trade show for gadgets, televisions, computers...pretty much everything in that fuzzy category of consumer electronics. Sure, there are shows more focused on subsets, such as E3 for gaming, but CES is the king-daddy for the overall industry.
I was there Thursday afternoon through Saturday morning. I phototweeted (new term?) from the show floor while I was there, and my pics and comments are posted at Twitpic.Now that I've had some time to unpack, soak my feet, and reflect on the experience, here's what comes to mind, in no particular order:
Wow It's Big! -- I've been to trade shows before, but nothing on the scale of CES. I'm not really sure how much total floorspace the show takes up, but it spreads out across very nearly the entire Las Vegas Convention Center (which, by itself, is larger than the town I grew up in) plus two other nearby hotels. Some numbers that came in right as I was typing this entry: an estimated 120,000+ attendees, 2,500 exhibitors, and 20,000 new products announced. No wonder I felt like I'd need a week to really see everything.
No Seminal Announcement -- Unlike last year's webOS launch from Palm, which really stole the show, 2010 didn't see any particular event or surprise that caught everyone's attention. I asked lots of people what they thought was the big thing and got lots of different answers...a few people were excited by all the 3D TVs, projectors, and laptops; some thought Google's Nexus One was big (although technically not a CES event...they held it just one day before); Boxee Box wowed some folks; and more than one mentioned Palm's flurry of announcements, but no singular thing captured all the buzz.
Ebooks A-plenty -- There were just scads of ebooks all over CES. They ranged from cheapo Kindle knock-offs to high-end, portfolio-style, dual-screen devices. The success of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble have clearly excited what had previously been a rather quiet market niche.
Android in Everything -- Google's free (mostly as in beer) operating system was crammed into all sorts of things, from gorgeous smartphones to touchscreen remote controls to hideously bad stationary videophones. Mostly, at least it seemed to me, it was small Chinese and Korean companies doing this, but it does suggest the possibility of an interesting trend.
TV Still Has Tons of Room for Innovation -- Four trends in TVs stood out clearly. First was the ubiquitous 3D that you just couldn't escape. I'm still a skeptic that 3D TV in the home will become popular any time soon, although gaming, sports, and porn could change that. Second, picture quality continues to improve. I saw some LCD sets that truly rivaled plasma in black levels (but not in size). Third, LCD will be replaced in the near future. I saw some AMOLED displays of reasonable size (20" or so) that looked flat-out amazing. Oh, and they were 3D, too. Finally, TVs are getting thinner by the minute. As an example, Samsung's booth had a jaw-dropping display of crazy-thin LCD TVs (the video below is kind of short because, as you can hear at the end, I was asked not to take any photos); these will be shipping later this year!
Flying Stuff is Cool -- One of the show's major prize winners was the Parrot G Drone, a bigger and all-around better version of that remote control helicopter you like to taunt your roommates and/or family members with, but which has a remote video feed and you can pilot it with your phone. Another guy was selling an RC X-Wing Fighter (not licensed by Lucas, I would expect, since he calls it the "Star Stryker"), which cost $299 and has the biggest remote control unit I've ever seen. Here's the video:
It's a Great Time to be a Fan of Mobile Tech -- All these reports say that nobody buys MIDs (mobile Internet devices, like the Nokia N810 or Microsoft's UMPC format), but you wouldn't guess that by looking at the CES exhibits. There were so many slates and tablets, most powered by Windows 7, that I stopped getting excited about them. And some of them were really impressive; Viliv had a whole line-up of interesting portables.
Some other incompletely articulated thoughts: car tech is getting interesting; Nokia's booth was pretty empty the few times I went past; few were very excited about Windows Mobile, either; there's a lot of garbage at CES, but at least they stick it in the "International Market" areas; LEGO has an interesting new MUD game coming out soon; geeks are attracted to exotic cars almost as much as they are to scantily-clad women...and they're equally unlikely to get much hands-on time; it's a good idea to have an actual working version of whatever it is you're trying to sell; there wasn't a lot of innovation in cameras that I saw...mostly around GPS embedding, which is cool; food is expensive there.So, there you have it. I hope to get back next year...it's a fun, if exhausting, experience.
