CES2019

Old tech gets a hot new makeover at CES

14 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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It seemed you couldn’t walk down an aisle at CES without seeing an electric bicycle, or an electronic accessory for the human powered kind. Like the Wink Bar, which took top honors at the Showstoppers LaunchIt pitchfest, held the day before the show formally opened.


Wink Bar.

The Wink Bar, developed and sold by Velco, a Paris-based start up, was declared the best of the twelve new products pitched in rapid fire succession to a panel of four judges with deep experience in venture capital and entrepreneurial enterprises.… More

Big brother, small ball and connected cars at CES

13 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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CES 2018 marked a turning point in the consumer electronics business. For the first time, the big companies talked more about services than products. This shift has been long in the making – it’s why the organisers no longer refer to it as the Consumer Electronics Show – and 2018 was the tipping point. It was all about connected home products, with long neglected categories like kitchen appliances and washers and dryers suddenly taking center stage.… More

Connected, automated homes are the new frontier for big consumer electronics companies

12 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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Home automation, powered by cloud-based artificial intelligence, is now a mainstream product category, taking center stage at the major consumer electronics companies’ booths at CES. The huge 4K and 8K screens that dominated Samsung’s display the past few years were stuck in a back corner, while the main aisles were lined with home appliances with voice recognition systems and driven by artificial intelligence.
LG led its press conference with artificial intelligence, via both its in-house platform and Google Assistant.… More

New broadband top cop talks and walks a narrow beat

11 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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Death threats kept Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai away from CES, but the acting chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Maureen Ohlhausen, sat down for an interview on Tuesday with Consumer Technology Association CEO Gary Shapiro. Her agency is responsible for broadband consumer protection enforcement, after the FCC bucked the job over last month. Appropriately, Shapiro opened with a couple of questions about network neutrality.

Ohlhausen said her concern is transparency – service can be pretty much anything so long as terms are disclosed – and the FTC will look at one basic question: whether consumers get what they’re promised.… More

$351 billion U.S. consumer tech 2018 forecast built on broadband

8 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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Source: Consumer Technology Association, 7 January 2018. Click for the full presentation.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) predicts that connectivity, particularly via mobile networks, will fuel industry growth, with total U.S. retail sales hitting $351 billion in 2018, up 3.9% from last year. .
Traditional consumer hardware categories are flat or declining, while connected devices and services are booming – for example “smart speakers”, which are tied to artificially intelligent, voice recognition services such as Amazon’s Alexa, are predicted to hit $3.8 billion in 2018, a 93% increase.… More

CES 2018 kicks off with cars, phones and artificial intelligence

7 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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I’m en route to CES (don’t dare call it the Consumer Electronics Show anymore) for my annual exercise in continuing education. It’s a total geek holiday, but the fun you get out of it is directly proportional to the work you do. There’s a lot to learn.

Self driving cars are the market segment where mobile broadband, artificial intelligence and consumer electronics intersect, and it’ll be well represented at CES. I’ll be alert for clues as to how manufacturers and platform operators intend to balance on-board processing with real time data connectivity.… More

Artificial intelligence, led by voice recognition, will redefine digital world in 2018

6 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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Three consumer technology trends gained speed in 2017: the shift from fixed to mobile video consumption, as I blogged about previously, the increasing utility and use of voice recognition technology and the adoption of the push model for artificial intelligence platforms and services.

In 2017, voice recognition technology reached the point where it can replace manual data and command entry on a routine basis. Usability is a work in progress – you can’t just look at a screen and say copy that and paste it over here – but the technical capability is there.… More

Video will drive the U.S. mobile market in 2018

31 December 2017 by Steve Blum
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Consumer electronics is collapsing into a two-product industry – smart phones and big screen televisions – and the balance is tipping towards phones. The end of network neutrality will accelerate the shift, as the big four U.S. mobile carriers use their control over network traffic and service pricing to sell more content and capture more viewing time.

The big beneficiary is AT&T. Its DirecTv Now over-the-top platform just passed the million subscriber mark. The Federal Communication Commission’s decision scrapping net neutrality rules allows AT&T to exempt DirecTv from data caps – zero rate it – while subjecting everything else you watch to monthly limits and hefty overage charges.… More

Broadband capacity crunch looms as 4K adoption accelerates

2 March 2017 by Steve Blum
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Broadband hits the video wall.

On current trends, at least 25 million U.S. consumers will be watching ultra high definition video programming via 4K television sets within two years. That’s a very rough estimate, but if it’s off, it’s probably low. But let’s run with it for the moment.

It means that at least 20% of U.S. homes will be looking for 4K-quality video programming. Satellite is a natural source for it and cable companies will try to push some through as well.… More

4K TV sales growing, with 20% U.S. market share in sight

19 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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About three-quarters of all large screen televisions – those more than 50 inches – that were sold last year in the U.S. (and worldwide) were 4K, ultra-high definition (UHD) sets, according to Paul Gagnon, the director of tv sets research for IHS Markit. By 2018, all but 100% of big screens sold will be 4K-capable. In raw numbers, the Consumer Technology Association – the trade association for the U.S. consumer electronics industry – estimates that more than 80 million 4K sets will be sold worldwide this year, and next year the total will be in the 100 million unit range.… More