Hmmm…. It’s one of those horrible days when I have to write a Display Daily and an editorial on the same day. Trying to have two, at least somewhat, original thoughts on the same day is always a challenge!
This week, much of my time has been taken up dealing with the flood of news and meeting requests for CES. Companies are already announcing what will be shown, including new monitors from LG that we are reporting in this issue. This year there will be even more about the automotive market, judging from my inbox, and that is one of the main differences between CES and IFA. IFA is heavier on the appliance market than CES, but both cover that segment. However, there is relatively little about the automotive market.
That’s very different at CES where the North Hall, these days, is pretty solidly about the automotive market. That includes those that make ridiculously noisy sound systems for the after market, but these days has a lot from the car companies and those that would like the automotive market to adopt their products. Last year, there were a number of interesting technology developments in that part of the show, including some innovative touch and gaze-based set-ups.
Ken Werner will be covering the automotive topic, while Chris Chinnock, Steve Sechrist and I have tried to divide up the rest. There will be plenty of TV news, although the dust may be settling on HDR, which was a huge topic last year. OLED TV is likely to be interesting as more brands enter the market, including Sony as we reported last week. I’m intrigued to see if Panasonic re-enters the TV market in the US, there have been rumours.
I expect to see more from the big Chinese brands these years, especially in TV. There will be drones, lots of health and fitness technology and, of course, 3D printing.
There will be lots and lots of VR and AR, I think, but as we have reported over recent weeks, numbers aren’t great, so for a few hopefuls, this CES might be the end of the road of development.
And there will be some new things that we hadn’t heard about or expected. That’s often the best bit of the show!
If you would like to meet up with me or the rest of the team, contact me.
Bob
