What I Saw at CES
The week before last I attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Most of my time was at a set of breakout sessions for government attendees, but I spent half a day on the convention center showroom floor. Despite news reports that attendance was down this year, the place was packed and energetic. I could not discern any noticeable downturn.
You probably read or heard about the show; it generates a great deal of news coverage. From my observations, here are a couple of trends that I noticed:
1. Mobility continues to be a huge trend. A number of vendors were showing improved devices and user interfaces. There were displays for internet service in vehicles, which sounds interesting but also potentially hazardous!
2. Video and video conferencing continue to improve. Several vendors were showing OLED televisions, which are only a few millimeters thick. Another big innovation was 3-D television, although these are not yet available commercially. I saw Sony's version, but there were probably a dozen other companies showing 3-D. You still have to wear the funny glasses, but it does make the viewing experience really realistic.The developments in video and mobility may eventually prove helpful in supporting federal telework and COOP (continuity of operations) programs.
3. Solid-state media is going into EVERYTHING, including camcorders. There's a great article in the latest Fast Company about the rapid market expansion of solid state memory (below). We have also heard from industry that solid state is moving into the data center. I believe hard drive technology may eventually be overtaken by solid state, which is much faster, quieter, longer-lasting and uses significantly less electricity and cooling.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/131/have-a-solid-holiday.html
Two things I wanted to see but really did not were improvements in battery technology and high-definition radios. Maybe there were new innovations on display but I did not see or read about them
We are starting to see seeing significant progress made in solid-state commercialization in several key application areas: data storage, electric charge storage, and lighting. Some of this can be attributed to the commercialization of nanotechnology advances
Collectively, these developments will have a high impact on consumer and business electronic devices including cellphones, laptops, servers, PDAs and other mobile platforms in terms of performance, manufacturing cost and energy consumption.
Mechanical disk drives, chemical batteries, incandescent (and many types of fluorescent) light bulbs are rapidly approaching the end of their technological and economic lifecycles as storage capacities increase exponentially while manufacturing costs drop geometrically for emerging solid-state components.