We’ve wrapped up the key takeaways from this year’s CES, taking a look at the main themes and the top areas of focus.

Three key themes of this year’s show:

Infrastructure
On display were tech elements that will support and enable the next round of tech innovation – 5G wireless that will achieve speeds up to 100x faster than 4G and cloud computing to store the data, applications, etc. that will fuel new products, services and experiences

Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is increasingly interwoven into every piece of technology enabling faster decision making, better personalization and greater relevancy

Interconnectedness
Getting devices and technology to work together is a problem that still vexes the industry. We see large and small players aggressively working to be the default ‘OS’ that overcomes and wins this challenge

Six areas of focus:

5G: What you should know

One of the “Stars” of CES (though it was more about the concept of 5G versus actual 5G enabled products at this stage)

Rolling out in USA in 2019. Critical mass in USA (and EU) could be as early as 2020 (or later…)

Up to 100x Faster than 4G

Expected to transform multiple industries including: transportation and cities (driverless cars), medicine (remotely controlled operations), and personal entertainment (faster downloads and streaming)

Sound and vision: What you should know

Screens are getting flexible

Voice is making its way into everything

Voice technology is getting better; it’s becoming more accurate and more personalized.

VR still trying to find a compelling use case beyond gaming and entertainment

Health and Wellness: What You Should Know

Health & Wellness is BIG business ($4.2tn globally)

The tech is pivoting from monitoring health to enabling wellness AND offering not only ‘diagnosis’ but suggested courses of action.
Consumers view health data as extremely personal (and valuable); discussion around right of consumers to own (and profit from) that data is proliferating

Wellness is an all encompassing term now – beauty, mental and physical health, fitness, prevention, diagnosis and more.

Transport: What You Should Know

Transportation will look different in the future. Personalized modes of transport and transport that converts easily from a passenger vehicle to a freight vehicle will be common

Transport will be much more autonomous and safer (98% of all accidents are result of human error; eliminate the human and you eliminate the error)

It will be more efficient (and theoretically better for the environment)

The in-vehicle experience will change and entertainment will dominate

Smart Homes and Cities: What You Should Know

Companies are battling it out to be the central home control/coordinatorGoogle, Amazon, Apple and Samsung appear to be in the lead

But lots of smaller niche competitors also in the space

Voice control is a key accelerant of smart home

One more thing… That Apple ad
Apple is staking out a different space from the rest of the industry. It has repeatedly slammed its rivals for stockpiling and misusing personal data for profit. Apple claims that it collects your data but doesn’t sell it or allow it to go off platform. Its ad at CES was its only involvement in the show.

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