The Verge shares what they expect from CES this year: wearables, autonomous, and always connected
With 2014 now firmly in the rearview mirror, the tech industry is gearing up to start 2015 off with a bang as it gathers for the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This grand-scale exhibition of the near future attracts thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of attendees every January, setting the tone for the year ahead. CES amplifies the trends that are coming and exposes the ones that are fading. Last year, it was the stage for a spectacular deluge of new wearable devices, spanning the full gamut from a basketball shooting coach to a wrist-worn speaker. Continue reading at The Verge.
Some highlights on what they predict:
A wearable redux
Wearable gadgets were the big story and the biggest disappointment of CES 2014. From Android-powered child trackers to pedometers that counted a dozen steps at the flick of a wrist, last year’s show was characterized by a lot of failed experimentation and hurried execution. With another year’s experience under its belt, the tech industry returns to tackle the same challenges that thwarted it a year ago. Recent introductions like Sony’s e-paper watch give us hope that the 2015 vintage will be much improved.
Fashion brands becoming tech brands
This year, the Consumer Electronics Association, CES’s governing body, welcomes Adidas, New Balance, and L’Oréal to its swelling ranks of over 2,000 companies. These brands have always relied heavily on technology to improve and refine their products, but they’re now joining the CEA because they are starting to sell literal pieces of technology to their consumers. For a company like Adidas, the overarching mission is to associate itself with anything and everything you might use to keep fit, so it’s unimportant whether that means a high-tech new mesh for running vests or a new iteration of the miCoach training watch. Or some combination of the two, as there are now increasing efforts toward making intelligent clothing that can sense and record the intensity of your workout.
Smartwatches at a standstill
Since last CES, the smartwatch world has been turned upside down by the launch of Google’s Android Wear and the official announcement of Apple’s forthcoming Apple Watch. Before those two behemoths entered the smartwatch arena, CES was where makers such as Pebble and Meta debuted their new products. But it doesn’t look like that will be the case this year: sources tell us that neither Pebble nor Meta plan to make any new product announcements this CES.
Read the full article at The Verge.