Quick notes from CES 2009

Random thoughts on this year's edition; these are made with regard to my 2 previous visits to CES in 2006 and 2007.

- The first thing that really stroke me, is that the show seemed empty (not that it was, but still): I felt a lot less people in the alleys, less exhibitor booths (in some places it was obvious people canceled the show, because the carpet was ready), lots of "unsold" space / closed areas. Other years, the booths seemed larger, with more attractions, shows (see my videos from previous editions). None of that this year. Is it because a lot of the keynotes have moved to the Venitian, and hence less people at the LVCC ? or just the current crisis ? Even at Sands, it seemed more quite this year. I asked a booth representative how it felt, and he confirmed this impression as well, regarding the flow of people he had this year on his booth. Even at the usually super packed car hall, there were many many less booth babes as other years. Cost cutting ?

Stuff to notice:

- I got my first wow effect at the Panasonic booth, with ultra-flat screens. These are really very very flat. Impressive. You can really use them as wall mounted screens now. I would see more of these later at the Samsung booth. Trends here ? Even larger LCD screens at 108" now; 3 years ago it was 103" I think. and 102" the year before. Also, ultra high-def screens are here : 4K definition . Very impressive. I however managed to find TV sets from last century; indeed we will have forgotten soon what they looked like.

- Dick Tracy's telephone watch showed up on the LG booth. I think everyone noticed it. it's a nice touch screen watch.

- Samsung had a very stylish Coca-cola vending machine, with a huge front touch screen. Very slick.

- some really nice 1080p projectors are now on the market. Probably the future, but still require excellent conditions (dark room, etc.)

- nothing much on the telephony space, I guess everyone's waiting for MWC in Barcelona.

Trends:

- Gaming accessories could be seen on lots of booths, clearly a strong trend. I really liked the 3D glasses at Nvidia. The Vuze (?) ones still stuck by their size and resolution. Very sharp. And Guitar Hero was everywhere to be seen. Dozens of booths were showing it...

- green and eco-friendly energy management seemed to me a strong trend.

- I didn't see them myself, but my colleagues at the Dalloz debriefing session mentionned a hot trend in making everything wireless : wireless HDMI cables, wireless recharging of devices by electrical induction... that is good, because we are just all drowing in different cable types. I hear China has normalized electricla chargers for example, whereas for us in teh Western world, we still have proprietary chargers for all different phone models for example.

- Indeed in the innovation section, many companies were presenting health management solutions. Something to track. Others have mentionned PUCC.

- industrial design is back in all devices, thanks to Jonathan Ive's work at Apple ? great, because these are objects we all live with

- full convergence of devices was shown in a number of places, including a Microsoft mock-up house (they even had a full house off-site, but who cares ? ;). The future is clearly about connected devices (all over at Samsung), but also about interfaces to manage your multimedia house, your multimedia digital files, all of it in a unified experience. The demo I saw aggregated about a dozen of vendors. Imagine the average John Doe trying to replicate that at home : find the 12 vendors, interconnect everything, pay for it all ? Not happening soon however. They would need a strong brand (such as a telco) to pull it off in a VERY packaged way.

Keynotes:

- I only went to the Cisco Keynote with John Chambers. They have a clear plan to go consumer with their Linksys brand. Although I understand the value and the potential, it is unclear to me that Cisco understands what it takes to make it in a consumer world (think Apple here), and why would they want to challenge the clients they sell to (operators?) by selling direct to their customer's customers. Chambers is no fool, so there must be more there than what meets the eye.

- I was told Microsoft's keynote was about ... not much

- Ford's CEO mentionned the windows car, and their family connections. Not much

- The Treo announcement was relayed quite a bit locally, as an iPhone killer (mind you, I haven't read the specialised press yet). Looking at the number of iPhones in circulation I see (on the plane, hotels, street), it's going to take a lot of effort to compete with Apple.

- missed Intel's keynote.