CES2019

Consumer electronics is smart phones and dumb TVs, and the rest is bits

4 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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Click for the full presentation.

The consumer electronics technology market is congealing into two products: smart phones and televisions. And even the television segment is showing weakness. That’s what the raw numbers say, although there’s more to it.

The first caveat is that sales figures are measured in U.S. dollars, and the dollar is getting stronger relative to currencies in key consumer electronics markets, particularly China. So products made and sold in China for yuan will be undervalued on a year over year basis if reckoned in U.S.… More

Forget cars, the business model is high tech automotive innovation

4 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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Love child of a minivan and a Gremlin.

If the Fiat-Chrysler media presentation is anything to judge by, the major automaker offensive at CES will be long on flashy concepts, disappointingly short on actual products but interesting from a business innovation perspective. The event featured a mock up a concept car that’s “designed by millennials for millennials”, along with the four millennials who are apparently responsible for it. They did some decidedly old school gushing over the car – called the Chrysler Portal – before wrapping up with a group hug.… More

Self driving cars and self starting republicans headline CES

3 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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Vegas, baby.

The product and policy buzz at the Consumer Electronics Show I mean International CES oops, the global technology event which has the official name of CES is humming around autonomous vehicles as the show gets under way this week. Car companies are out in force, while Silicon Valley-style tech companies continue to back away and the big guns of consumer electronics seem to be showing up because its the Car Electronics Show the most awesome global technology event ever.… More

FCC approves, publishes draft set top box rules

22 February 2016 by Steve Blum
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As expected, the Federal Communications Commission moved ahead last week with a plan to rewrite the rules for network operators – cable, telephone and satellite – that deliver television channels to consumers, requiring them to allow third parties such as consumer electronics manufacturers and software developers to access their programming streams. The shorthand way of explaining it is to say that the set top box market will be open to competition – anyone would be able to license the necessary technology, build a box and sell it to consumers.… More

Network ownership will no longer mean content control with new STB rules

16 February 2016 by Steve Blum
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It’ll all look the same.

Opening up the currently closed set top box market will disrupt, and perhaps kill, the network business models that rely on it. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission is set to launch a process that to write new rules requiring cable, satellite and other flavors of multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to give third party manufacturers direct access to their television transmission streams, including on-screen guide data. With all due respect for license limitations, such as recording rights, of course.… More

CES still hasn't bridged the continental divide

10 January 2016 by Steve Blum
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A lonely outpost.

This year’s rebranding of the tech extravaganza formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show saw “International” dropped from the name. It’s now just CES, although it still bills itself as a “global technology event”.

Looking just at attendees and media, it certainly is an event with global pull. But the products on display overwhelming come from companies based in developed or near-developed countries, even though the actual manufacturing is often done in the developing world.… More

Maturity comes to consumer electronics, for the moment anyway

9 January 2016 by Steve Blum

Now cats can post people pictures on the web.

“A maturing of nascent ecosystems” is one way of describing CES 2016. It was in fact one of the predictions made by Shawn DuBravac, the chief economist for the show’s organiser, the Consumer Technology Association. Translated, it means “you won’t see a lot that’s new, but you will see a lot more of what was new last year”. Spot on.

Home automation control is increasingly decentralised. There are plenty of platforms vying to integrate all your gizmos into a unified control scheme, but it’s optional.… More

Snowden tells CES crowd fighting encryption is the wrong fight

8 January 2016 by Steve Blum
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“I’ve read the emails of terrorists, I know what they’re doing, I know how they work”, Edward Snowden told a rapt audience in a CES booth yesterday. “Terrorists are already using encryption. Everybody in the world is using encryption”.

He was being interviewed by serial entrepreneur Peter Diamondus – X-Prize, Singularity and, yesterday, Human Longevity, Inc. – via a BeamPro telepresence robot made by Palo Alto-based Suitabletech. It was a promotionally convenient necessity since Snowden is a fugitive, living in exile in Russia after blowing the whistle on the National Security Agency’s massive data trawling operation.… More

Virtually new products at CES but not much else

7 January 2016 by Steve Blum
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Virtual reality is ready for a break out into the mass market, but augmented reality is not offering a compelling product to consumers yet. It was hard to find a gee-whiz proposition while wandering through the Las Vegas Convention Center today at CES, or indeed much of anything that was significantly different from last year. Except for the virtual reality headsets and the long lines of (mostly) guys waiting for their turn to try one out.… More

Regulators need to accept the new future of work

7 January 2016 by Steve Blum
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Twentieth century government and twenty-first century entrepreneurship do not mix well. That was the top line consensus at a CES panel discussion this afternoon. Moderated by Julie Samuels from Engine, a tech policy advocacy group, it included two company reps – Laurent Crenshaw from Yelp and Marco Zappacosta from Thumbtack – and Arun Sundararajan, a business professor at New York University.

“Taxes are not the issue, small businesses care much more about regulation”, Zappacosta said. As businesses expand, so does the regulatory burden.… More