CES: what to expect from the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas – trends, tech and teasers
From wearables to AI, and 5G networking to 8K TVs, we look at the things that will be generating the most buzz in Las Vegas this week and the game-changers to expect in 2018
Every year, one or two technologies capture the imagination of consumers. Eighteen months ago, it was Pokemon Go, the first augmented reality mobile app to really catch fire. A few years before that, it was 3D printers.
Last year, it was digital assistants – Amazon Echo, Google Home and others – that used cloud-connected artificial intelligence to respond to voice commands.
Baidu pulls virtual girlfriend from VR product after sexism concerns
These smart speakers have set the stage for voice control to become a feature in a host of gadgets. And that will probably be a key theme at this year’s CES – the consumer electronics convention in Las Vegas between January 9 and 12.
“Last year, Amazon seemed to dominate in terms of intelligent assistants or intelligent speakers,” says Gary Shapiro, head of the Consumer Technology Association trade group, which puts on the show. “It has been one of the breakaway products of the year. There is a fourth (sales) channel now. You talk to your speaker, and it buys stuff for you.”
There’s a little bit of everything at CES – smart beds, virtual reality headsets; 360-degree cameras, super sharp TV screens, powerful gaming computers and a self-driving shuttle bus that taps computing power from IBM’s Watson. The show, which is not open to the public, attracts about 4,000 exhibitors. More than 184,000 product buyers, industry analysts and journalists attended last year from 150 countries.