Last week several SaatchiNYers headed to Las Vegas for CES, the largest and most intense consumer electronics showcase of all the land. One of those people, the lovely Meghan Sturges, put together a recap of some of the week’s main trends and takeaways. Read on and enlarge your knowledge of the future.
THE BASICS
CES = Consumer Electronics Show
1.9 MM square feet of exhibition space = 37 football fields
3000+ exhibits
Over 150K attendees
IT’S ALL CONNECTED
We’re starting to see a convergence of technology through all aspects of life: home, auto, entertainment, health, etc. CES showcased TV’s that connect to your smartphone and push content from one screen to another (Samsung) and a fully integrated digital home (Lowe’s Iris). Digital is no longer a media channel – it’s a thread that connects your entire life.
SMARTPHONE AS COMMAND CENTER
The center of our connected lives is the Smartphone. We use it to check our blood pressure, change the channel on our TV and to check our baby’s weight – it is the command center for everything.
Voice, touch and more natural gesture controls that feel intuitive to us thanks to the iPhone are now making their way into laptops, TVs and cars.
For example:
- LG touted an intelligent line of appliances equipped with near-field communication technology on the show floor. Now, you can scan the NFC tag on your dishwasher with your mobile device to activate and control the appliance and connect it to the rest of your wireless kitchen gear
- In the auto space, technology varies – from simply unlocking and starting your car (Chevy) to planning a route on Google maps and sending it to your car (Audi) to the ultimate self-driving car (Lexus)
THE QUANTIFIED SELF
Since the 70′s we’ve been inventing new ways to monitor our bodies to gather data. You log its activity, its inputs (food) and outputs (energy), to provide yourself with a ‘quantifiable’ picture of your actions. More apps and gadgets are taking this idea to the next level every year. A few from CES included:
- Withings Smart Activity Tracker, as is an evolved version of its connected scale, the Smart Body Analyzer. Both the scale and the tracker have added heart-rate monitoring, which puts them just a bit above other big names like Fitbit.
- HAPIfork is a “high-tech” fork designed to monitor how quickly you’re eating. If you eat too quickly it vibrates in your mouth. It also records data about your food intake and allows you to connect it to your computer, phone, or into the cloud. As the year goes on you can track your dietary progress over time.
BIGGER AND BETTER SCREENS
A new generation of screens was unveiled in Las Vegas. What do they have in common? They’re massive, super high-def, and pushing the boundaries of what we think TV’s are.
- Flexible screens hint to a future of wraparound screens that are no longer fixed in one place.
- Even phone screens are growing. A number of major manufacturers unveiled phones that fit nicely in between the average smart phone and the common tablet
