Given all the outlandish rumors circulating around Apple’s forthcoming announcement on Wednesday, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the purported Apple tablet can become transparent and levitate. Indeed, it is otherwise difficult to explain how the device was able to hover above the CES show floor, invisible to everyone’s eyes but prominent in everyone’s imagination.
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This year’s CES was four days of meetings, events, booth tours, and crowds as it is every year. But this year’s show was, unlike last year, imbued with a sense of optimism and opportunity that was absent in 2009. At times even the most innovative and interesting products can get lost in a sea of product demos, displays, and PR hype. And while knowing what is new and noteworthy is the first question people ask me, it is often the last thing I care about. Because, it’s not what’s on the show floor that’s always most important, it’s what ends up in consumers’ homes, sooner rather than later, that counts because that’s where the money is. And what’s new, innovative, and different at CES is often a bit away from hitting the store shelves or being relevant to a mainstream consumer.
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On Monday NPD released consumer technology results to our weekly data clients for the third week of the holiday season and so far sales results are tracking at, or a little better than, our pre-holiday expectations. Prior to the holiday we expected sales dollars to fall between 0 and negative 5 percent for the holiday period. For the first two initial periods we reported on, November sales and Black Friday week sales, revenue has been slightly stronger. With November monthly sales rising less than 1 percent from 2008 due to the strength of sales early in the month, and Black Friday sales falling just 1.2 percent, the trend line has been favoring a closer to flat holiday than our worst case negative expectation.
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At this year’s CES, few agreed with the melancholy Muppet about the color of his skin. Stepping into the green spotlight came in several forms.
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CES brought together more than 2,700 global companies and unveiled an estimated 20,000 new products according to CEA. It’s a lot to digest, even if you can walk the show floor for all four days, so we’ll take you through some of the new trends in the PC, imaging, and audio and video markets.
Netbooks Dominate CES, The Rest Of It Was Just Fluff - Stephen Baker
The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Polarized Lenses - Ross Rubin
Digital Cameras At CES: Zoom, Speed, And Go Wi-Fi Or Retro - Liz Cutting
Returning from CES it occurred to me that I don’t remember when one of the major pieces of CES buzz was around a specific PC product. For better or for worse, this year the netbook was that product. (Of course I could make an argument that everything at CES is now about PC technologies, PC- like business models, and PC connectivity and that CES is more like Comdex now than ever…but I won’t).
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Serving as a parallel to the economy, the focus on flat-panel form factors at CES this year shifted from extravagantly huge to lean. Even Blu-ray players were downsized, with Panasonic introducing a portable Blu-ray player and Samsung introducing a 1.5″-thick player that can be wall-mounted or used with an accessory stand designed to showcase its sleek profile.
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Now that high resolution, face detection, and optical image stabilization have become digital camera table stakes, digital camera manufacturers are stepping it up and taking it broad. Imaging happenings at CES ranged from novel to retro, as manufacturers aligned with the overarching CES themes of connected, slim and smart, but also fun.
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A few days after the world focuses on my hometown of New York tonight, I’ll be flying toward its Las Vegas simulacrum en route to the Consumer Electronics Show. My colleagues and I will be participating in a number of presentations and roundtable discussions at CES, including:
I’ll be moderating that last panel, which will bring together representatives from the worlds of broadcasting, wireless service providers, and mobile platforms. Most of the attention at CES is on giant screens, but the past year has seen an explosion in PC-based broadband TV and video on sites such as Hulu and those of the major broadcast networks. That’s a dramatic contrast from the walled gardens that have characterized the mobile TV offerings to date from providers such as MediaFLO USA and MobiTV, the latter of which recently passed the 5 million subscriber mark.
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Consumer Technology | Ross Rubin, Executive Director, Industry Analysis | 
January 26, 2010 10:21 am | 
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