It’s January, and that means the Consumer Electronics Show opens this week in Las Vegas. This year’s CES could determine which consumer product categories — some of which barely existed a year ago — will become winners, and which will barely be memories by this time next year.
The big headline categories in this year’s gadgetpalooza include tablets, 4G devices, new incarnations of 3-D TV, notebooks using Intel’s Sandy Bridge processor architecture and AMD’s Brazos platforms, cars pimped with the latest electronics, and countless variations on the above.
‘Tablets, Tablets,Tablets’
For Current Analysis’ Avi Greengart, the three biggest items are “tablets, tablets and tablets.”
He expects to see a variety of such devices based on a tablet-optimized Android, “presumably 3.0,” as well as the unveiling of a Motorola tablet. That particular device has attracted attention because of a widely seen promotional video that positioned the as-yet-unseen product as the latest evolution in a family of tablets stretching back to the original Ten Commandments — and beyond.
Greengart also expects Research In Motion’s PlayBook tablet to capture some attention, and Microsoft to offer details about a version of Windows optimized for ARM processors. But he pointed out that last year’s CES showed a variety of pre-iPad tablets, “a healthy percentage of which were later killed or delayed.”
If CES were a western movie, the tablets would be gunning for the reigning gunslinger, Apple’s iPad, which dominates the category. Greengart said that, although Apple won’t formally be at CES, its enormous influence in tablets, media players, and phones will be felt in product positioning and auxiliary products, such as Sony’s clock radios with iPod docks.
Here Comes 4G
The other area which could signal a massive wave of new products is 4G, the next generation in high-speed wireless.
Greengart said he expects Verizon to announce a 4G lineup of…