Sunday, January 22, 2012

Late Perspective on CES

CES is a couple of weeks over, and the Internet is filled with articles about the best of, worse of, and trends; but it is never too late to put in my fifty cents. While I didn't get to see as much or attend as many conferences as I would have liked, it was still a very exciting time. My biggest take away: connected TVs are the next frontier.


Of course, connected TVs couldn't come without the same myriad of problems all other devices have experienced in the last few decades. The most obvious one is the plenitude of development frameworks evolving (all masked under the guise of HTML). From LG and Samsung to Sony and Panasonic, everyone has a bit of a twist on how to develop and publish TV apps, creating the beginnings of another nightmare for media companies.

While companies developing applications for mobile devices have seen a consolidation of platforms, it is still quite challenging to build a product that works across the board (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry). Things have vastly improved for sure, but it's still fairly costly to cover the entire spectrum. In an evolving industry that are connected TVs, you would expect that manufacturers choose a common platform to facilitate and expedite consumer adoption.

Yet, and as usual, TV manufacturers are choosing the long complicated road that is creating "competitive advantages" by means of offering diverging experiences. My hope is that a common platform will emerge and be widely adopted; one that supports application delivery on computers, mobile devices, tablets, and connected TVs (allowing for customizations depending on the screen size). Google may win this one, with Android; but there is plenty of fight left on Microsoft (who enjoys a large install base through Xbox and should consider getting into the game before games delivered to the TV kill their gaming console), and of course, Apple may have dibs on this party with their not-so-secret Apple TV.

One thing that surprised me was the sheer amount of iPhone covers at the show (mostly companies looking for distribution deals in North America). The fact that they took an entire pavilion was certainly weird.

It was also surprising that machine to machine (M2M) took a back seat at CES. I would have bet (being Vegas) that more companies would showcase in-home ubiquity through M2M technologies. Imagine your oven being able to alert you on your TV that your roast is ready! Perhaps next year.

The geek award of the show goes to the new A.R. Drone by Parrot with HD camera. Now I know what I am getting for Christmas.

Already planning for NCTA in Boston this year and looking forward to more advances in video delivery and connected homes technologies.


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