Putting CES 2011 in Context
Posted On Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at at 10:47 AM by Dianne Kennedyi M home from CES and trying to pull it all together. When attending CES, it is important to put what you see in context. This year's Consumer Electronics Show attracted approximately 140,000 attendees, a number not seen since 2008. An increase in attendance appears to track with the slow but steady recovery of the global economy. This year the Consumer Electronics Association reported a record-breaking 30,000 attendees who came from outside the U.S., with about 80 different countries represented. According to CEA, this year’s show attracted 2,700 technology companies, and its keynote presentations featured appearances by 22 top CEOs. I certainly was "impressed" by the long lines to check into my hotel, the hour wait to get on the monorail to the LV Convention Center and the wall-to-wall people on the show floor. No wonder! 140,000 people are an amazing crowd.
CES is really all about what’s new. CES is the place where technology innovations are announced to the world. CES can certainly help us understand the trends, but make no mistake that in many cases, what you see at CES is much like viewing concept cars at the auto show. I saw many exciting new technologies − most of which are not commercially available. My estimate is that 90 % of the technologies we reviewed are not commercially available here. About 60% of those were, however, commercially available in Asia and these companies attended CES to find commercial outlets in North America. The remainder, those in “prototype,” attended CES to find OEMs to brand and sell their products in any market around the world.
Last year 30 tablet PCs were announced at CES 2010. By the end of 2010 only a handful of products made it to market and only two significant products, the iPad and late in the year the Samsung Galaxy Tab™ had any traction. Using this as an indicator, with 80 tablets announced this year we can hope to see only 8 to 10 serious offerings by year end. I think the tablets offered as joint ventures between technology companies developing tablets and wireless service providers hold the most promise.
Dianne Kennedy
Dianne Kennedy
