Hot trends and technologies at CES 2010

LAS VEGAS, USA: Every year, at the international Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the path for the trends that would have a major influence on the launch of new products and technologies is laid down.

This year, CES has over 2500 exhibitors including 330 brand new ones, showcasing various gadgets and innovative technology. However, there are some technologies that become common across major manufacturers and are easy to identify as the thing to look out for during the year.

This year, at the last CES 2010 expo in Las Vegas (next year it is going to Chicago), there were quite a few things across categories that seem to have been adopted across manufacturers and would be reaching the consumer soon. Some of them might not even stay in the long run, but this year; these are the ones that would keep you up to date in the gadget world.

LED Displays: Although Samsung had introduced this technology into mainstream TVs last year itself, this year almost every big and small manufacturer came out with LED displays. Samsung, Sony, LG, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sharp and various others announced and showcased their new Series of LED TV. They didn’t just stop there; LED was incorporated into various other gadget categories as well.

So we saw, Desktop monitors, Digital Photoframe, Projectors, Phones and even cameras with LED on showcase across the pavilions. Samsung even went on to announce a 6 monitor setup connected with each other to enjoy gaming/movies using ATi’s Eyefinity technology.

3D: 3D is the new craze among the big brands. Although NVIDIA launched their 3D gear in 2009, it took main stage this year only. Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, Sharp, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic launched their new series of 3D TV at various press conference throughout CES.

Each of them launched their own 3D eye gear as well, to go with the 3D display; Sony has the funkiest of them with various colors. If this wasn’t exciting enough already, Asus and MSI went ahead and showcased gaming notebooks with 3D that made games like Batman: Arkham Asylum literally come to life with outstanding effects.

Panasonic and Sony even showcased their full HD 3D projectors for the industry. The first 3D Blu-ray DVD movie – “Monsters vs. Aliens” was also launched at CES. DirecTV even went ahead and announced a 3D TV channel to provide the consumers with 24hrs entertainment once they get a 3D TV.

What was interesting was that Samsung also had a 3D TV on display which does not require users to wear glasses; rather he/she would have to watch the TV from a particular distance and angle to view the 3D effect.

E-book readers: With the Kindle 2 becoming a hot seller worldwide, manufacturers have woken up to the possibility of e-book readers being preferred over paperback editions across countries. This year at CES. There was a huge variety of e-book readers available of all sizes and shapes. Various big names displayed their e-book solutions at CES. iRiver had one, Plasticlogic launched their Que e-book reader, Asus, MSI, Archos, and Samsung etc. each had an e-book reader.

The number of small manufacturers with e-Book readers was so big that CES created an entire section for them to showcase their devices. There were some interesting devices featuring two display screen, color displays, Physical QWERTY keypad, a color touchscreen control set etc.

Of course, how would they fare against Tablets and Internet devices such as the Sony Dash is something that the consumers would decide.

Wireless Connected Home: Wireless connectivity across the home was another major topic of display. Numerous manufacturers including biggies such as NetGear and D-Link displayed products for a wireless networking at home to facilitate communication as well the transfer of multimedia content.

The main idea is to have all the major devices connected to each other wirelessly and then they can play content shared on the home network through wireless LAN. There were even little things such as the Wireless Media stick which can be connected to any DVD player/TV/Picture frame, which in turn would allow the connected device to play movies, music and photos shared on the home network!

High Definition: With the launch of 3D, High Definition has become stronger as 3D HD content would become a big demand. Full HD camcorders, Digital Cameras with HD recording, Personal Media players that can play and output HD files were all present and showcased at CES.

Samsung, LG and few others even displayed full HD projectors which attracted a lot of attention. More TV’s with full HD were launched at CES along with Blu-ray players. HD Radio also generated a lot of buzz in CES, not to mention NVIDIA and ATI both had it going to prove their solution was best for HD playback at their respective booths. Wireless HD content streaming also had its role in pushing HD up as a hot trend for this year.

iPhone/iPod accessories: The sheer number of booths displaying iPhone and iPod accessories was simply outstanding this year at CES. There was a separate iLounge Pavilion for this stuff, but there were numerous exhibitors spread across the whole event. Funky IPhone cases, luxury cases, charging cases, earphones, earphone accessories, chargers, car chargers, battery packs and even solar chargers were present in abundance. Didn’t come as a surprize as 75 per cent of the crowd at CES was carrying either an iPhone or an iPod touch!

Touchscreen: The touchscreen phenomena is the second thing carrying over from the past years. After the iPhone, there has been a major surge among brands to put down as many touchscreen phones as possible. Now this has gone a step further with the e-book readers and handheld devices showcased at CES. Touchscreen all-in-one PC’s, notebooks and netbooks as well as other handheld devices generated a lot of crowd around them.

Multitouch was the second part that seems to be on a steady rise. There are notebooks available with multi-touch gestures already in the market, but at CES large-screen multiple touch displays generated a lot of excitement. This clearly indicates that the market wants more and more projects.

Windows 7: Microsoft’s Flagship Operating System was everywhere. It has got rave reviews already and has been widely accepted by consumers as well as enterprises. CES turned out to be the biggest promotion for Microsoft. Not only did they have one of the biggest and sexiest show hall, each and every manufacturer shipping out PC or Notebook had preloaded it with Windows 7. Even though it still retails at a steep price, Windows 7 is expected to become the operating system of choice across Windows users.

USB 3.0: USB 3.0 is another thing that created a lot of buzzword at CES. There was a dedicated superspeed USB zone, 17 USB 3.0 ready products were launched on Day 1 of CES. Not to leave existing customers behind, Seagate and WD even gave a Pci/Express card to USB 3.0 adapters with their USB 3.0 harddrives. Motherboards with USB3.0 should start arriving at a cheaper cost in the market within the first quarter itself. USB drives are also expected to make the switch over within a few months.