Early impressions of CES 2010
Over the past few years there really haven’t been may new trends. Rather than announcing new kinds of devices, the trend seems to have been in making existing trends less expensive converged devices.
As we head into CES 2010 there are a number of trends we expect to see in 2010.
Year of the ebook – The long promised day of the ebook has come. While the Kindle is taking the US by storm, the rest of the world is wide open for the taking. Even the US is a potential market for a no.2 device. Sprint is planning on making an announcement for Skiff Newsstand – an e-reader technology. We aren’t sure what it is, but we will be at the press conference on January 7 to find out.
CES also announced in September that they had run out of exhibit space in their ebook TechZone.
Social media mayhem – Facebook has brought the social media into the mainstream. Now everybody wants a piece of the market. Keep an eye on talkingDigital.org during CES week (January 4-10) and we will be posting the best and the worst implementations of social media offerings.
Android (we hope) – The Motorola Droid campaign for Verizon has alerted geeks everywhere that the iPhone has a serious potential competitor. We are hoping to see a number of new Android phones and features announced at CES. While many of these announcements will happen in the months following CES at other technology expos.
Flip-like camcorders – Flip camcorders are to the home video industry what the iPhone is to the smartphone industry. Everyone from Sony to Sanyo has a competing product to the Flip video camera. We expect a barrage of new products that demonstrate how every other company just doesn’t get it. The simplicity, durability and video quality have made Flip a success. We expect to see companies announcing Flip-style cameras loaded with overly complex menus and layers of features. Flip is expected to add new HD products as well as wireless video transmission.
Keep an eye on talkingDigital.org for more CES trends leading up to our coverage in early January.