The Top Trends At The Consumer Electronics Show
Written by admin on April 2nd, 2011TV.
Cars get smarter. Ford has seen a great deal of success with its Sync voice-controlled car electronics system. In surveys, 32 percent of buyers said Sync was important or critical in their decisions to buy a Ford vehicle. Ford hit its target of selling a million vehicles with Sync last May. About 81 percent of customers are satisfied with Sync and 77 percent would recommend it. This week, Ford said that developers can create apps that can run on Sync, it will give users 3G or Wi-Fi access inside the car, and it has redesigned its dashboard to be electronics friendly. You can plug in your iPods, phones, memory cards and other devices into the deck.
Not every car is going to be so connected in the future. But Ford’s moves show that the car companies are finally moving to an annual cycle for driving new technology into their vehicles, instead of the usual five years. It’s also heartening to hear that we’re not all heading for a big pile-up. Ford says that Sync lets drivers choose a new song with voice commands in 4.9 seconds, while it takes 30 seconds without it. The company is trying to minimize distractions for the driver even as it adds more stuff for you to do while you’re driving. Ford was just one example of myriad other car-related announcements at CES.
Connected TVs catch on. Web-connected TVs are now proliferating through the model line-ups of consumer electronics companies. Last year, Yahoo launched its Widget Engine to enable TVs to display web sites on a TV using a remote control. Samsung, LG, Toshiba and Sony have all shipped TVs with the Widget Engine. In 2009, sales of web-connected TVs rose 830 percent from a small base, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. This year, growth is expected to be about 129 percent, and Yahoo expects its Widget Engine will be on millions of TVs. That gives the TVs access to thousands of web sites, ranging from Netflix to Pandora. Samsung, which says it captured 75 percent of the connected-TV market in 2009, is adding an app store so that users will have more choice about what they can access via the connected TVs.
Green tech gadgets get real. Green technology is moving from the sounds good, lip-service stage to real products. The big consumer electronics companies halted their arms race of making bigger and bigger flat-panel displays (although there was an 84-inch TV on display in LG’s booth). Instead, they talked up the better energy efficiency of LED TVs and thinner sizes. Hewlett-Packard got rid of some toxic chemicals in its PCs and has switched to entirely degradeable packaging. About 20 companies displayed their wares in a green tech zone on the show floor. And most big TV makers had flat-panel displays in their booths with wattage data.
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