Just returned from a few beautiful days in San Francisco for the Consumer Electronics Association’s 2012 Industry Forum, a series of consumer electronics and technology conference sessions, market research analyses, networking events, keynote luncheons and award dinners. Very impressed with the depth of knowledge, experience and variety of attendees and panelists, the analysis of current and future technology markets, and the CEA team and organization itself.
This year’s event focused on trends such as 4K, cloud tech, next generation wireless, health and fitness tech, the changing world of retail, the right recipe for startups and many other topics. Some interesting highlights:
Technologies to Watch:
Lots of discussion regarding 4K TV aka Ultra HD, or TV with extremely high resolution (about 4,000 pixels in horizontal resolution, or about four times that of 1080p), and how consumers and content providers are going to adapt.
3D printing was another hot topic. Their current state is limited to mostly design and programming work, with some home applications. The near future looks to include printer standardization. Big questions will grow in the areas of intellectual property origination and control, and the impact these devices will have on retailers.
Tech and education is a rapidly growing and evolving area, with parents having greater access to grades (when teachers utilize the systems, keep records up-to-date, etc.), and college students gaining greater access to courses online from many sources, including some of the US’s oldest universities.
Home Networking:
The router’s usual location in the house has moved from the home office or study to the living room. The main reason: increased web access from the TV. Also traditional electronic controls of the home’s lighting, security and temperature, which usually had to be “pushed” together into one [big] controller or device, are now being “pulled” together by smaller and more powerful mobile devices. The next big step may be unifying standards to help all of the powered appliances in the home be controlled more simply, with less power.
Retailers including Lowe’s are racing to catch up, and keep up, with the increased connectivity devices have to the Internet. While those products can help the customer by connecting the web, the retailer who sold the product can find itself disconnected from that customer once the product leaves the store. To help remedy this and ensure products stay technologically current, Lowe’s has pushed all of its vendors’ products to have some sort of web connectivity, utilizing the vendor’s choice of three or four standards allowed by Lowe’s. Cloud computing is also “pulling” this type of evolution into existence.
Original Content for the Web:
“Divergent Content” is growing, becoming more mainstream and is increasingly more acceptable or approachable by the TV networks. Some original web content that crossed over to traditional means of distribution started as shorts or webisodes that were converted into the longstanding TV and film formats, without much success. These panelists discussed how TV and film producers are slowly becoming more accepting of the differences inherent to web content. Interesting to learn that YouTube’s core audience, comprised mainly of 12- to 18-year-olds, tend to care about those content creators on a personal level, and seek a more personal connection with them. Most teens don’t use TV for content but look almost exclusively to the web.
Another significant difference between traditional and web distribution is the “call to action”. Web content many times drives users to act upon the content: to do research about the creator, topic or related history, to seek out similar content or to buy something. YouTube is adapting to suit their audience and their needs, including more of an integrated social media component a la Google+.
These are only a sample of topics that were discussed on a few panels. Anyone who deals with consumer products or technology as a business owner or a service provider would benefit from these yearly events. Great stuff.