Disruptive Stuff

digithoughts:

CES takeaways

I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch of stuff, but these are the top of my head takeaways from CES 2013:

TVs:

• Less focus on 3D. 
• 4k, or Ultra HD, will happen. The upgrade chain reaction of such a shift is almost ungraspable.
• Massmarket OLED TVs are still some time away. But we’re getting there. The largest OLEDs are still 55 inches. The largest “regular” TVs I noticed were 110 inch 4k LED TVs. What if I someday will own a 110 inch 4k OLED TV?
• Curved screens.
• Sony’s TV which can display two images at once. Not a first, but it looks well implemented and very handy for gaming. 
• Smart TVs. Everybody wants them. Everybody is doing them. Noone does them properly.

New chips that will power our future gear:

• 8 core ARM chip from Samsung. 8 freaking cores. I wonder if Samsung have time to fit it in the Galaxy S4?
• New desktop/tablet and mobile chips from Intel. I missed an announcement of a killer mobile chip though. My guess is that the company is saving some for the MWC in Barcelona.
• NVIDIA presented its Tegra 4.
• Qualcomm also showed us some upcoming mobile powerhouses. And had a bizarre keynote, featuring both Big Bird and Steve Ballmer.
• AMD also wanted to have a say and announced new chips. The company also had a few OEM wins to brag about.

Screen Tech:

• Curved and even bendable screens. Very interesting for future applications such as smartphones and wearable tech.

Wearable Tech:

• Watches, glasses, fit bracelets etc. It will be a big thing. Wearable tech sit between today’s pocketable gadgets and the — through surgery — embedded technology of the future. I’ll stick with pocketable and wearable tech for the foreseeable future, thank you very much.

Smartphones:

• They’re getting bigger. Some so big they’re not even phones anymore.
• 1080p screens. 1080p is the new 720p. The perceived improvement is not as dramatic as it was going from 480p to 720p. But nice nevertheless. 
• Waterproof phones is getting more common. I need this and hope it’ll be a commodity. 
• E-ink screens on the back of smartphones. Great idea. Someone should do this right.

Touch and apps:

• The touch screen and app revolution which got big with the modern smartphone is overtaking screens of all sizes and gadgets of all sorts. Refrigerator and cars with apps? Of course. A 20 inch large 4k resolution tablet? Sure. Big 27 inch AIO desktop computers with touch? That’s how they come now. An 85 inch Touch screen Smart TV? You got it.

Laptops, tablets and Windows 8:

• Some are getting closer, but OEMs have yet to figure out a laptop/tablet hybrid that just feel… right. If there is one? For certain segments, I think it does. 
• Regular laptops: Yes it’s official, we want them to be thin and have high resolution touch screens. The Windows 8 kind of laptops anyway.

Indie hardware OEMs:

• Thanks to kickstarter, a lot of interesting stuff at CES came from small companies with big dreams in various stages of coming through.

Gaming:

• NVIDIA’s Shield and the Razer Edge, a Windows 8 gaming tablet. 
• Oculus Rift. VR gaming. It’s the future and 1993 at the same time.

Android:

• Android is almost everywhere and in everything, even if Windows in various incarnations had its share as well.
• Also: Vizio is going after the tablet and phone market with stock Android as an differentiator. Smart.