Facing the future: A CES 2019 recap

With many of us still reeling from ICE (International Casino Exhibition) earlier this month in London, the memory of another long and arduous conference season is still fresh in our minds. And with the gambling trade show behind us, now is also the optimal time to refl ect on the tech device industry’s biggest event of the year, CES.

Drawing in upwards of 180,000 delegates from a vast array of tech industries, much of the audience is made up of suppliers and retailers, as the tradeshow is entirely B2B facing.

It poses the perfect opportunity to tech companies, major and lesser known, to establish new business relationships and display their work to the world through the trade show’s vast media coverage.

Analysts at St Albans-based tech research consultancy Futuresource, Simon Forrest and Jack Wetherill insist the show has reached peak capacity at its Las Vegas venue, and has started to expand out into surrounding hotels as companies hire out spaces to host their displays for a much higher value.

The power of AI According to Forrest and Wetherill, the standout topic for this year’s event was AI. As a broad concept, AI has been adopted much more widely in recent years and months, and the January trade show placed somewhat of an emphasis on machine learning’s role in advancing voice technology. “It isn’t artificial intelligence as you and I understand,” Wetherill explains. “There isn’t any learning going on within these devices.

CES takes a look at the hottest consumer electronics for the year ahead

These companies are now using machine learning where they create algorithms in the cloud called neuro networks, and essentially program these complex intelligent algorithms and load them into the devices. These can then run the alrogithms on a neuro network accelerator, which is found in the silicon chip itself. “It’s quite a neat technology trick at the moment. These devices need to be connected to a cloud or an online service somewhere in order to upload information, and then do something intelligent and deliver something back to the device itself,” he adds.

Forrest says smart speakers are a prime example of this use of machine learning, with voice technology somewhat stagnating up to now. But this is set to change as voice assistants move towards preemptive behaviours. “We’re getting to the point now where they will be able to anticipate your needs. Alexa might do a temperature check at seven in the morning and say to you as you’re about to walk out the door: ‘You may wish to defrost the windscreen of your car because it’s icy out there’,” adds Wetherill.

Companies such as the Cambridge-based Speechmatics is dedicating its R&D budget to improving the use of machine learning in enhancing the language abilities of voice assistants, particularly in enabling devices to understand additional languages as the lack of Asian languages available has led to the likes of Ali Baba developing its own device to present to the Chinese market.

Championing the 5G force

What is surprising to many attending the event for the first year is the quantity of niche products on display. For example, smart devices and mobile add-ons geared at automating healthcare and wellbeing by giving people the opportunity to carry out medical testing and monitor bodily functions via their devices.

And the driving force behind such technologies is 5G, an area that took precedence at the expo. When speaking with AT&T CEO John Donovan, MediaLink chief executive Michael Kassan said he believed this was the first year the mammoth event had a “true focus on one thing” and that was 5G.

In a keynote panel on the potential of 5G in the mobile world, the two discussed how the network will likely signal a renaissance of the stale retail sector, as retailers consider how to shift the customer journey across different channels for an omni-channel experience. “Retail is not dead, bad retail is dead,” Donovan confirmed.

“There is a completely new model that has to take into account things like home delivery. Ten percent of all fulfilment on a mobile phone is done with home delivery. “Where is the store located? How do you start [a customer journey] online and finish in-store? Do you want to finish at the store or at home or even at the office?

“All of those things require intense networking, good data flows and real-time response. We’ve remade our own retail model. All of the things you get traditionally with data, such as who’s shopping when, where and how; those things can lead you to be out of date. Things have gotten really real-time like changing the signage at certain parts of the day,” Donovan continued.

AT&T launched the world’s first 5G-enabled mobile service (dubbed 5G Evolution) in 12 US cities in December 2018. The networking giant announced further plans to roll out the service to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose in H1 2019.

In the announcement, the company said its 5G+ network was built to provide a mobile 5G experience over millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum, offering users a faster mobile experience than standard LTE. However, since the release, users have taken to online tech review sites to report that the service is actually 4G LTE, but with additional LTE features like 256 QAM, 4×4 MIMO, and three-way carrier aggregation. The firm says it plans to have a nationwide mobile 5G footprint using its slower band spectrum by 2020.

“We’ll grow our 5G+ network over mmWave spectrum and offer nationwide 5G coverage with our lower band spectrum (sub-6 Ghz). We plan to begin deploying that lower band spectrum in the second half of this year and plan to have nationwide coverage available in early 2020,” an AT&T update reported on 9 January. High on the agenda during the 5G discussion was its capacity to drive VR, AR and MR into mainstream adoption, particularly to provide immersive entertainment experiences.

Donovan used the example of the Dallas Cowboys offering an immersive experience to game attendees at their home stadium. 5G would certainly accelerate the potential to provide better VR graphics with more scope to produce unique experiences. Similarly, CPO at VR headset developer Magic Leap Omar Khan told a panel of leading commercial entities exploring the capabilities of 5G on their products that spatial computing allowed experiences to be taken beyond the confines of a mobile or desktop device or TV and out into the “real world” where they belonged.

AT&T CEO and MediaLink CEO discuss the potential for 5G on future devices

“5G removes [that] compromise because it is now untethered to a network or a building or home and you can start to experience it in the wild where it belongs,” Khan said. Upon reflection of the event, Forrest and Wetherill represent a much more realistic view on 5G, noting it is likely that many of the examples given at CES are unlikely to materialise.

“I think it is positive but some of applications that arose in the highlights might not come to fruition. For example, they showed a surgeon being able to do augmented reality in real time. Why wouldn’t you do that on a closed network within the surgery? There were a few examples that were perhaps quite speculative,” Wetherill says. “I think my caveat on this is 5G has quite a long way to go yet, although it has quite a lot of promise.

If you think about the fact the technology is at the early stages of roll-out, there has to be a big investment in infrastructure to provide the coverage and we think any of the mobile operators will use their existing frequencies to roll out 5G.”

Getting home smart

Both predict 5G home routers will come to market this year, offering users the opportunity to improve connectivity to their smart home devices, which were a very prominent feature of the trade show.

The Futuresource team notes the lack of new smart home appliances use cases at the show, claiming the industry is instead focused on improving and consolidating its offer of existing use cases, including security, monitoring, diagnostics, climate control and lighting. In improving existing use cases, vendors have streamlined installations and added longer ranges and smarter sensors to their devices.

“Even without new use cases, smart home vendors are finding new markets. Video doorbell company Ring is a good example. After conquering suburban households in North America, it expanded to Western Europe, and now is going after urban households [those who live in flats].

The Door View Cam that Ring launched at CES is easy to install and works as the door’s peephole,” states a Futuresource report on the smart home devices offering at CES 2019. But the most prominent use case for 5G was by far its ability to improve internet speeds on mobile almost tenfold.

And as the next generation network nears, device developers are eager to develop the next generation of mobile, and that is looking to be the flexible smartphone. Foldable phones have been loosely discussed by the media and the mobile devices industry for a couple of years now, but movement has appeared slow in terms of development, with only hints and blueprints of creative concepts leaked by major firms.

But this year, CES was treated to the first fully functional foldable phone that is already commercially available. Royole’s FlexPai started shipping in December and features a bendable 7.8 inch AMOLED screen made from flexible plastic. Along the back of the FlexPai is a hinge allowing users to bend the phone in half as if they were folding a book.

While Royole’s phone made headlines across the wider tech space and within the media, the standout product unveiling for the Futuresource team was LG’s rollable TV which rolls out of a sound bar to become a full-sized HD TV. “That was absolutely the headline visual moment of the show for me. It’s making a statement about what’s possible and we’ll see where it takes us. TV often does catch the headlines because it is so visual and to have this new take is quite impressive,” says Forrest.

The first appearance of fully marketable foldable devices gives way to the potential of the area hugely developing over the next year. “The flexible display fits quite well in the automotive industry. You can imagine form factor smartphones being released, maybe curved. Ultimately you might find deformable displays come from this,” Wetherill comments.

As a delegate, the show provides an opportunity to look under the bonnet and see products and technologies that are under development. However, Wetherill warns that not all devices on display at CES make it onto store shelves in the long run, but the potential for evolving niche and lesser-known areas of tech gives the trade show a huge amount of worth in such a vast industry as technology.

“It’s evolutionary but when these products make their way onto the shelves, consumers see them as revolutionary. Going to a show like this enables us to see what’s coming down the line,” he concludes.

Upwards of 180,000 delegates attended CES 2019                                                              Credit: Consumer Trade Association