From drones, cars and robots to jewellery, appliances and TVs, the new technology on display at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show promises to be smarter and friendlier than ever.
The annual tech ext-ravaganza with more than 3,600 exhibitors set to formally start on Wednesday in Las Vegas is likely to see innovation across a range of sectors, from health care to autos, connected homes, virtual reality and gaming.
“There are always a couple of winners at CES, and sometimes there are the sleepers that turn out to be the cool thing,” Gartner analyst Brian Blau said. But Blau said the innovations are “often evolutionary, not revolutionary”.
Televisions will play starring roles at the show as usual, with gi-ants such as Samsung, Sony, LG and Vizio among contenders in a market rapidly shifting to ultra-high definition. “We are in the sweetest of the sweet spot in the TV mark-et,” NPD analyst Ste-phen Baker told AFP while discussing CES.
“Sales of 4K TVs are exploding right now,” he said, referring to the popular new high-definition format.
Drones are also expected to make a splash at CES, where an Unmanned Syste-ms Marketplace has doubled in size from a year earlier to cover 2,300 square meters.
Blau expects the drones on display at the show to be more sophisticated, with easy controls and even applications that let them be operated using smartphones.
“If you want to make it popular with consumers you have to make it relatively easy to use and foolproof,” he said. “And that is what a lot of drone manufacturers have been doing.”
Electronics makers are also using buildi-ng smart technology into all manner of devices, allowing them to adapt to how people use them, responding to voice or gesture, for example. “A lot more of your devices are going to run with less direction from you but a greater sense of how to help you out,” Blau said.
