Over 3,500 exhibitors, spanning exhibition space which covers 185,000 square meters – the annual Consumer Electronics Show is the biggest thing in Technology. Without question. Over the years it’s played host to some huge announcements, while in 2015 it looks set to usher in new trends and support the buying trends of recent months by making product categories you won’t be able to avoid in our retail stores later in 2015. EFTM will be there, so here’s what to expect.
Big Names, Big TVs
Without question the biggest companies in the world will be in Las Vegas and their hope is that some of their new products will dominate the headlines and TV news cycles of the week ahead.
Samsung, LG and Sony all create enormous exhibits which showcase almost every product they make in one space. Their new range of Televisions will dominate the space, and while in years gone by there were technology announcements like LCD, Plasma, 3D, 4K, OLED and the recent Curve it feels to me that in 2015 we’ll be talking more of the same.
Curves will get cheaper, bigger and also smaller – to cater for more buyers at the average retail level. 4K will again feature in more TV’s – again looking to make it cheaper and available to more people.
In the TV space, new operating systems and interfaces are about all that might take the eye other than things we’ve seen before.
So – what can we dig deeper to find at CES 2015?
Having walked the show floor several years in a row now, I think we can expect to see a few key things.
Wearables
With Smart-Watches being churned out of factories by the biggest names in tech – including Apple, we’ll see a huge range of watches, from simple no-name ideas to fancy full functioned but little known Android and other watches.
Some will hope to find a nifty point of difference with a feature like tracking your kids or something else like that – while others will be cheap knock-offs of the big names.
Outside of watches, we’ll see more fitness bands than you can jump over – with everyone looking to find a way to pop their head above the rest.
Accessories
This is the stunning thing about CES – Apple isn’t there. But their products dominate almost every hall of the convention center.
From iPad cases, iPhone cases, to a stylus for your iPad, or devices that are controlled by your iOS device – it’s never-ending, and frankly these are some of the coolest parts of CES.
With the big brands launching almost the same old same old, there’s some innovation kicking in around accessories and your average smartphones.
3D Printing
This area has grown and grown over the years, and while the applications for 3D printing are yet to reach the family home, more and more in business it’s becoming a must have accessory.
The number of exhibitors with 3D printers has grown exponentially in recent years. The target price for the consumer market has to be sub-$500, so if we can see smaller, faster and cheaper 3D printers there could be something big in this.
The Smart Home
For me, this is the big one – the Smart Home is the buzz word for 2015. It’s not new, however it’s just about ready to explode.
With Apple and Google talking about a back-end system to link together apps from a range of manufacturers, we might soon be able to link together multiple “connected devices” no matter where you got them.
The idea of your smart phone actually being smart and knowing what you’re needing and using that information to turn on lights, cooling or heating, connect your appliances to each other to achieve energy and cost savings, let alone just make life easier.
Keep an eye out for what’s to come in 2015 with your Smart Home.
I’ll be in Las Vegas for the entire week of CES, stay tuned here to EFTM, follow us on Facebook and Twitter and we’ll keep you up to date!
