On the first day of CES, I took a preliminary walk around the show floor as the booths were getting set up. I threw out my jaw yawning (no joke). It’s not that there wasn’t pretty neat stuff – it’s that the show as a whole was broken this year.
The killer feature across many big brand consumer electronics this year, from car to TV to toaster, is utility. “What can this device do for me?” As devices become connected, they increasingly compete on licenses, partnerships, and “the could” – not on the physical hardware. This was the elephant in the room this year. Netflix or Yahoo! widgets will sit on nearly every device, and yet neither company has their own presence at the show. Google revolutionized the mobile industry, and while Android makes a very strong presence, the big G isn’t around (even now that they have become a mobile retailer). Continue reading “Welcome to CES: Utility now trumps gadgets”
