From January 9th to 12th, 3,500 large and small companies will be present at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, including over 1,000 startups. It is the most important world consumer electronics fair, which is seeking a definitive relaunch after the stop of the pandemic and the still slow recovery of last year: around 130 thousand participants are expected, compared to 115 thousand in the last edition. At CES the video recorder (1970), the first video game (Pong, 1975), the compact disc (1981), the Commodore 64 (1982), the DVD (1996), the Xbox (2001), the Blu-ray (2004) and many other gadgets and technologies. And this year?
Artificial intelligence and sustainability
“There will be a lot of talk about AI, how it will change robots and chip production, how it can be applied to hardware and every type of industry. It is a push that will bring great changes in various sectors,” explains Brian Comiskey, Director of Thematic Programs of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) which organizes the Las Vegas fair. “Another push, which is not only desirable but necessary, is towards eco-sustainability. All companies will have to rethink the impact of their products: they will be forced to do so also because the environmental awareness of consumers is growing, and for example in the Netherlands 70% of potential buyers of consumer electronics consider this as an important aspect in the choice”. But sustainability also means innovation, as Comiskey underlines: “We will see several alternative materials, for example graphene for a new type of batteries that are about to be commercialized. We will see how technology transforms health: in the USA, GLP1 inhibitors are becoming increasingly widespread, which were created to keep diabetes under control but which today are increasingly used to combat obesity. It is an epochal change for the entire ecosystem linked to food and digital health. And we will also see many examples of agri-tech, where with increasingly optimized algorithms the use of pesticides and fertilizers is decreasing.”
Radical changes are also needed to address social evils such as human trafficking or financial crimes, and here too technology plays a role: the president and CEO of Nasdaq Adena Friedman explained what will be in Las Vegas in her keynote. Other announced speakers include the CEOs of L’Oréal and Walmart. But you’ll also see lots of cars at CES, with an entire sector dedicated to autonomous vehicles.
A world of robots
A few years ago in Las Vegas there was an abundance of smart products, from the hairbrush to the flower vase: very few actually reached the market, even fewer had any sales success. According to Comiskey, the same thing will not happen with generative AI: “Let’s think about companies, for example. Today, robots are programmed for specific tasks, in manufacturing, logistics and other sectors. But with generative artificial intelligence they will become more flexible, they will be able to react more creatively and adapt to the most diverse environments. This change will also be reflected in home automation, in the appliances we have at home.”
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence will be able to save us money by allowing us to control domestic energy consumption and avoid waste: and so the topic of sustainability returns. Another step forward promises to be Matter, the unique home automation platform launched last year: it allows you to use devices from different brands and systems, such as Google, Apple, Amazon and others. “It is the first step towards an interoperable environment, where you are not forced to change devices when switching from one home automation platform to another. It will still take some time for it to establish itself, say five years, in line with the replacement cycle of current products, but the Matter example is enlightening, because it is a standard born from the agreement between producers”, observes Comiskey.
The standards
In Europe we have the Union that imposes the rules, for example the USB-C port for charging, which has now also arrived on the iPhone: “As CTA, we are in favor of standards, as long as they do not impede innovation. The idea is that legislators decide together with producers, and in this the European Union has an advantage, because in our country the rules sometimes change from state to state”. An example is the Right to Repair, the right to repairability, in force in the state of New York and soon in California. It is also being discussed in Europe, together with the possibility of imposing replaceable batteries for all portable devices: “I believe that consumers are interested in the degree of innovation, there will always be those who prefer a more powerful or more water resistant smartphone, others will opt for replaceable batteries. It’s important to have the ability to choose,” reflects Comiskey.
Innovation AI for medicine, hi-tech agriculture, the smart home: the 50 Italian startups that will be at CES 2024 have been chosen by Emanuele Capone 21 December 2023
The future of smartphones
In recent years, there have been no major smartphone launches at CES, which instead are mostly presented in conjunction with the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. But is it a market still capable of innovating? “Let’s think of Africa, Latin America, South-East Asia, areas where the smartphone is very often the only access to the network, it is not only a tool for connecting, but also for entering the global economy: here the innovation lies above all in the apps and in the use made of them. But there is also room to innovate in design, user experience, processor efficiency and batteries, for example. Without mentioning artificial intelligence, which has also arrived in smartphones: the major manufacturers design the chips for their devices themselves, and increasingly often include a dedicated section for AI. I am convinced that in a generation or two, AI will radically transform smartphones as we know them today.”
That leaves the metaverse, which in 2022 was one of the most talked about technologies. Today we talk about it much less, but does it still have a future? For Comiskey, “contrary to what people think, the metaverse already has practical applications in businesses: in telemedicine, for example, or with digital twins, digital twins with which to carry out experiments and simulations at very low cost”. been with the iPhone, Apple’s Vision Pro could become the portal through which the metaverse could move from companies to the general public.”
Before the official opening, it’s time for previews at CES: Italian Tech will follow the entire event from Las Vegas with articles, videos and live links.