By: Jason Steinberg
Last week’s Consumer Electronic Show was a massive, eye-opening, kinetic, dazzling show of the global technology battle. This battle will be played out on two fronts – mobile and in our homes. It will be won by the company that can connect these experiences in converging ecosystem across devices, OS and services and it’s about to get seriously interesting.
The battle for the living room
Although connected TVs dominated the battle of the living room with 4k, OLED and glasses-free 3D everywhere, the real showstopper was the Kinect. PrimeSense, the company that makes the underlying technology is now working with TV and PC manufacturers to incorporate widely. This means shopping from your TV using an Avatar that looks exactly like you, no remote controls and of course lots of video games. It was all a bit HAL9000 but a lot more fun. There is a real visceral pleasure to using one’s hands and voice navigation through Kinect to control what’s on the screen.
Again, comprehensive service offerings are required to make this work. The only folks who offer up credible solutions at the show were Microsoft and Google.
In the end, finding entertainment will be about the search. Google has a leg up here, but they often fall down in execution. It’s not surprising that Google has teamed up with DISH on their latest offering and Google TV 2.0.
Media fragmentation is accelerating. The way into consumers’ living rooms may not be through traditional TV programming much longer, but rather through sponsored content and in-game advertising. Even kitchen appliances should be on everyone’s innovation agenda in preparation for what’s just around the bend.
The battle for our phones
Mobile phones & tablets were a huge draw. Improvements in wireless connectivity, processing power, screen sizes and diversity in devices should keep this an exciting area for quite a while. 4G networks will allow mobile devices and phones to actually work the way everyone wants them to. I watched an Atom powered Lenovo phone stream an HD 360 movie to a TV and then high-speed scrub with no choking whatsoever.
People lined up deep to see new Microsoft phones (the Nokia Windows Lumia 900 was a real contender). As a Windows phone user myself, I was stopped three times by attendees asking if I liked it and if they could quickly play with it. Finally we’re getting options for a mobile interface that isn’t a bunch of app icons on a black glass covered slate. Although Windows phones have barely made a dent in the market, the potential is definitely there.
As mobile devices continue their march to ubiquity and the interfaces become ever more people-centric, continue to invest in building avenues for personalized relationships with consumers. It will be increasingly difficult to cut through the clutter when information is suggested by devices based on locality rather than through traditional discovery methods.