Home Stretch – CES 2012 Daze Four
Panasonic's Wall of 3D HDTVs
It’s day four, and the final day of CES. Time to take advantage of the fact half the attendees have already left town to hit the popular main hall, land of TVs, home networks and camera goods.
The main hall is haunted by two industry specters who are not in attendance. Apple is driving the direction of “Smart TV”, a.k.a. home entertainment networks and sharing content across devices. Hollywood is driving 3D content and viewing. Add to that mix a technology competition to see who can manufacture the biggest and thinnest flat panel screen for that home theater of your dreams.
Smart TV
With no industry leadership, or very little, the TV manufacturers are striking out on their own, creating their own standards and ecosystems before Apple can enter the market. Sony announced the ability to access their library of music and store pictures across the cloud to their devices, and showcased a SmartTV “Powered by Google TV”. Samsung has built a proprietary network of home appliances such as refrigerators and washer/dryer with their PCs, tablets and Smartphones. Following Apple’s example, they are having software developers create content exclusively for the Samsung ecosystem. Not to be outdone and showing increasing capability, Haier was showing a home network driven by a SmartTV interface similar to Samsung. Available only in China today, Haier hopes to support it in world markets soon.
3D TV Without Glasses
This year the movement to 3D TV as standard is on. Walls of high definition TVs showcased last year were replaced by walls of 3D high definition TVs. However, I’m more impressed by the wave of glassless 3D systems. LG, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sharp and Sony all showed glassless 3D high definition TVs.
Off in the corner of Technicolor was also an up and coming major 3D technology. The folks at Technicolor have developed a simple green (go)/red (stop) 3D depth finder dot for cameras. The purpose is to “focus” 3D to the proper depth, eliminating 3D that hurts the eyes. Aimed at professional Hollywood movie cameras today, they hope to integrate the technology into consumer 3D video recorders, 3D digital cameras and other devices
Large and Thin is In for Home Entertainment
LG showcased the largest 84 inch Ultra Definition 3D TV and 55 inch OLED 3D TV. Sharp showcased an 80 inch LED with 3D as part of their Aquos line. Sharp also showed a technology demo focused on 8K resolution LCD, doubling the resolution of existing displays. Panasonic showcased consumer styling of high definition TVs with their DT, WT and VT series of TVs.
Panasonic Thin Thin Thin LCD designer displays
Playing Hooky – CES 2012 Daze Three
Chicago at Monster Cable Awards CES 2012
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
Heart Attack Grill - Small burgers (1/2 pound) with 5 strips of bancon, cane sugar coke, 20 oz beer in a bag & fries cooked in lard
The Cool Stuff – CES 2012 Daze Two
Wandering the halls in search of what’s new at CES. After much debate with Zac, the winner is… Apple. O.K. We’re cheating a little since Apple wasn’t exhibiting at CES. However, the influence of Apple, from bling designer accessories for smartphones/tablets, to smartphones/tablets, to PC design, to home networking was obvious. Now for the other cool stuff.
CTX Technologies Virtual Keyboard
CTX Virtual Keyboard
Terrorize Your Cat – There’s a Robot Driven iPhone App for That
iPhone Robots - Orbotix Sphero, Romotive Romo & Parrot AR Drone
Truly Personalize Your iPhone
OhMiGod Personal iPhone/iTouch Accessories
Wintel Update – CES 2012 Daze One
Apologies to Fox Mulder
Disclaimer: Patrick is a 15 year veteran of Intel where he held a number of marketing positions implementing Wintel and industry programs during the 1980s and 1990′s.
This year’s CES is the largest ever and the crush of over 150,000 attendees was on. I’ll comment about what’s new later. I decided to continue my focus on the follower state of Wintel by attending the keynote of Paul Otellini, Intel’s CEO.
In technology marketing there’s an old saying, “When you can’t sell the present, sell the future”. The Intel presentation was exactly that, a vision of the company direction. I do give Intel credit for at least waking up and realizing the rest of the world was moving on without them. The presentation though showcased how far they have to go to catch up.
The presentation started with an amazing consumer commercial showing a fuller, richer consumer experience. Gone (I desperately hope) are the Intel silly commercials of dancing Intel Fellow rock stars and mythical robot workers in the company cafeteria. I was becoming hopeful. However Paul then went into fabrication investment, nanometer fabrication statistics and compute enabling. He reverted to presenting Intel technology vs. presenting consumer benefits.
As I stated before, Intel is behind and following in many major consumer markets. Intel management also is muddled internally since it shut down its Digital Home Group last October. It was amusing to watch Paul’s speech of “innovation” built about smartphone and Ultrabook PC/tablet design prototypes created by the now defunct Group.
The gleams of hope that Intel is finding a direction.
o Intel’s first smartphone product
An announcement of the first Intel smartphone product through Lenovo (a PC manufacturer) and China Unicom (the second largest telecom vendor in China), available in Q2. To give you an idea of how much of an uphill struggle Intel has to overcome in smartphones, at CES NVidea was showcasing 6 smartphones, including Samsung and Motorola; Microsoft showcased 14 smartphones from Toshiba, Acer, Samsung, ZTE, HTC and others; and Marvell had a display of 26 smartphones/ebooks/tablets with representation from most major brands.
o A multi-year announcement with Motorola
Corporate announcements are fine, but execution is the key. Most corporate cooperation agreements either go no where or fail. This within weeks of the Google-Marvell announcement to create a reference design for Google TV.
o Ultrabook Demos
I appreciate Intel’s promotion of this new, light form factor. I appreciate that over 75 Ultrabook designs are in the market or coming. I just can’t get excited over what I see as the Apple Macbook Air clone program of 4 year old technology. The Ultrabook reference design prototypes showcased a “innovative” sliding screen from PC notebook to tablet. Everyone in technology knows this notebook/tablet design has been done before and is at least 10 to 15 years old.
o Thunderbolt I/O
Finally something I can appreciate. Even though I have read of Thunderbolt, the demo of copying a gigabyte movie in less than 20 seconds was impressive. Now if only my cable Internet supplier would offer anything close to that download speed.
o NFC
The demo of swiping your wallet against the PC was silly. I’m not impressed with NFC as Intel innovation. Especially since it is not. Intel joined the NFC board last year. However, wrapping McAfee security somehow, somewhere around mobile devices and personal or financial data would be a major coup.
The keynote concluded with a visit from Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas. Let’s call him Willy since the “.” is childish b.s. The Intel announcement to send off Willy as an ambassador of technology around the world, and wrapping the buzzword of social networking around it is mostly lame advertising. It’s not even marketing. The hope and immediate focus is Willy will promote the new Ultrabook form factor. That’s fine for the PR on existing products and the meeting this quarter’s immediate sales quota. It doesn’t promote the long term of Intel, new PC usage or next generation products/technologies. I repeat, it is lame advertising trying to look “cool”. For music technology history fans, check out the Intel NY Music Festival in the late 90′s. It not only promoted music and PC sales, but stimulated new technology development and music usage by being the first 24/7 online concerts.
I left the speech feeling like Fox Mulder of the X-Files. Disappointed. Still, I (desperately) want to believe.
Wintel Update – CES 2012 Minus Daze One
No Really, You're Fired
Disclaimer: Patrick is a 15 year veteran of Intel where he held a number of marketing positions implementing Wintel and industry programs during the 1980s and 1990′s.
This last day before CES officially starts tomorrow was mostly a press event day for CES vendors. I decided to make it a Wintel day, attending an Intel update for the press in the morning and the last Microsoft CES keynote in the evening. As we walked to the Venetian casino meeting room in the morning, Zac observed that technology was funny. Once you’ve seen something innovative, a year later it’s considered old hat and stale. That observation was to come back at me again and again during the day.
Intel Press Event
Intel still has amazing clout with the press. That was shown as the press event room was at full capacity and turning press away. The presentation to the press was by Mooly Eden, the general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group, and focused on the user experience Intel hoped to deliver with Ultrabooks in 2012. As I listened to the range of items, I grew depressed since I felt I was watching an Apple product roadmap presentation from years ago.
I know supplying 370 million PCs a year is vastly different from Apple’s 5 million Macs. However, I remember Intel as a creator of new products and product features, part of the famous (or infamous) Wintel alliance. Heck, Intel and Microsoft kicked ass and moved markets. Normal historical PC product costs decreases, given the 4 years since the original Apple MacBook Air introduction, indicates Ultrabook PCs should already be mainsteam $500 to $1000 PC systems. Instead, we’re getting a future’s pitch of yesterday’s technologies. From the comparison chart I whipped up in minutes, I can only conclude that Intel, and the PC industry as a whole, have become technology followers. Damn that’s depressing. I’m hoping that the Intel keynote tomorrow by Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, will prove me wrong.
The Last Microsoft CES Keynote
Press Waiting For MSFT
The last keynote was a typical Microsoft keynote, the same format as any other Microsoft keynote for the last 10 years or more. That is the problem. Ballmer starts out, sometimes with a celebrity moderator like tonight’s Ryan Seacrest. Then 3 or 4 product managers/directors come out and speal off the features of their products, finally a product demo. Now, to be fair, some of the Microsoft technology is bleeding edge. I can see the new Metro interface having value. I found Microsoft’s push to make X-box the consumer home hub vs. a PC interesting. The problem I have is nothing presented was new. If you track Microsoft developer programs and events, you saw 90% of this pitch 6 months ago. Even Ballmer, when queried by Ryan Seacrest about “What’s new?”, replied “In 2012 it’s Windows 8, Window 8 and Windows 8″. That’s an execution response. If I’m a Microsoft stock holder, I say “Bless your little heart Steve Ballmer. Thank you”. I agree it’s important for Microsoft as a corporation to make Windows 8 a business and financial success. However, to me, the consumer, it’s not new. Microsoft’s execution issues are not my problem. I found myself checking my Apple iPhone for the time remaining and wishing the keynote event was over.
To sum up, the days of Wintel innovation seem to be over at both Microsoft and Intel.
I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice, but still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they’re gone. I guess I just miss my (Wintel) friend.
- Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding, Shawshank Redemption 1994
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