Winners And Losers Of CES 2017
CES isn’t simply a showcase of what the latest technology has to offer. It’s a cage match of the competing tech trends. The gadgets and technologies for tomorrow are brought out for money and attention. When the dust clears, some certainly come out on to the top. As you might have been aware of this year’s CES, it had a lot to say about smart homes, self-driving cars, laptops and more. All these categories have a lot to amaze us and are excited too. But such rapid progress in competitions will also leave some people as winners and losers.
After this year’s CES, definitely, it would reveal the winners and losers among the competitors. Here is a list of those winners and losers of CES 2017.
Winners
1. Amazon:
Anyone building a smart home gadget couldn’t wait to show off its compatibility with Alexa. Alexa is Amazon’s cloud-based digital assistant. Everyone saw that trend coming, but it was just surprising how powerful Alexa’s draw was. Even brands (like Monster) that don’t make smart devices were excited to offer products, like wireless speakers with an Echo or Echo Dot. Amazon may be the most influential brand at CES 2017 to have no official presence on the show floor.
2. Minimalism:
TVs have been thin for a long time. But LG’s Wallpaper TV has been said as the thinnest TV. It makes even an iPhone look fat. Thanks to OLED tech. This has self-illuminating pixels, the panels can precisely be paper-thin, and they’re light, too. This is a 77-inch model that weighs just 27 pounds. LCDs are pretty formal, too, with super-tiny bezels now the norm. And short-throw projectors and transparent displays altogether are making the TV disappear.
3. Upper body strength:
Not only TVs, laptops are getting big again in contrast to TVs. Models from Razer, Lenovo, Acer and others have performance and gimmicks as their priorities over form factor. A minor flaw for this trend is virtual reality. It’s hard to build a thin computer when massive graphics power is required. But there’s also a renewed sense of experimentation. Razer’s three-screened Project Valerie and Acer’s beast of a laptop can help you out. The Acer’s curved screen turning heads for their strange and bulky designs can do.
4. Routers:
Everyone wishes to have a better connection. But with the conception of internet-connected smart gadgets, connections must be secure mainly. Routers like the Norton Core and BitDefender Box keep your devices safe from digital evil-doers, and mesh-network routers. The routers like the Linksys-velop can easily cover your entire home in Wi-Fi.
5. Minority Report:
With self-driving technology, car manufacturers had to get focussed to make an impression at CES 2017. Toyota and BMW both showed car interiors that looked more like something from a sci-fi flick than any car. And although Faraday Future’s big unveil of its first production car, the FF 91, wasn’t flawless. The design was too impressive and forward-looking. All these futuristic unveilings guaranteed that the tech press would continue to make comparisons to the 2002 Tom Cruise action-thriller Minority Report for years to come.
6. Personal health:
Many of the single-purpose health gadgets like smart hearing aids and noninvasive blood analyzers could really help people with specific conditions. You may get over to the oddness of some devices like a smart breast pump, But it can be appreciated just for the way it’s useful to new moms.
LOSERS
1. Everybody who isn’t Amazon:
Remember when Apple HomeKit was the sexy smart-home tech? Neither do most of the manufacturers in the field, it seems, as few played up their devices’ compatibility with Apple Home. Google Home wasn’t much of a presence. Although it’s early days for that platform and wasn’t entirely absent. Other players like Samsung SmartThings are still around. But it seems Alexa has a monopoly on all of the momentum.
2. Phones:
The smartphone is still the gateway to our digital lives, but you’d never know it from looking at CES 2017. Almost no major phone announcements happen at CES anymore, with Huawei boldly making an exception this year. Whether it’s market consolidation, slowing upgrade cycles or just a down year, mobile wasn’t part of the conversation at CES.
3. Privacy:
Smart devices, often powered by AI, can create amazing experiences. But by their nature, they need to gather data about the user. Sometimes, that data can end up serving different purposes. Whether it’s marketers wanting to sell you something, or hackers wanting to steal your identity, the information from your smart gadgets is a target. This’s the one that didn’t exist before. As the Internet of Things gets more things, guarding your data is more important than ever.
The above is all about the winners and losers of the CES 2017. It is common that some products will be placed on the top and some are kept behind due to some flaws in them. This generally happens because they are competing in a huge number of smart devices.
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