From drones and smart cars to remote-controlled door locks and eyewear, the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show promises to showcase the “Internet of Things,” along with gadgets like smartphones and tablets.
The technology extravaganza that plays out each year in Las Vegas has evolved beyond the eye-popping television technology for which it is known, to serve as a stage for once-dumb devices given brains in the form of computer chips and Internet connections.
And smartphones and tablets have become such stars in their own rights, complete with rapid release cycles and exclusive launch events, that the titans in that market tend to leave the CES stage and hordes of press from around the world to gizmos that don’t usually get a spotlight.
“You will see a lot about the Internet of things; all the gadgets that are not a tablet, smartphone or personal computer but are attached to the Internet,” Forrester analyst Frank Gillett said of CES, which officially opens on Tuesday.
“Like your car telling you that you are speeding too much or door locks that you unlock with a smartphone,” he continued. “There are all kinds of gadgety things like that we will see.”
CES organizers are also billing the four-day show as the largest “app event” in the world, complete with hackathons and a mobile applications “showdown.”
“Apps have become an integral part of our everyday lives, from use in phones, computers, tablets and wearable technology,” said Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), which organizes the show.
“The app innovation at CES offers the opportunity for networking, showcasing technology and hackathons focused on this growing tech space,” Shapiro said.
Long a hardware showcase, CES is under pressure to adapt to consumers’ love of digital content and services ecosystems such as the iTunes library tailored for Apple iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch devices, according to Milanesi.
“So you need the health, connected home and other zones to show end-to-end value being delivered through the hardware,” she said.
Apple has made a practice of skipping CES, opting instead to launch products at private events deemed must-attend media affairs. Other major players, such as Samsung and Google, in the smartphone and tablet market have followed suit.
“Last year, CES exhibits went from an Internet fork to connected cars,” Milanesi said. “There is so much, it is easy to get lost in the noise.”
Analysts did expect arrays of smartphones or tablets powered by Google’s freshly-released KitKat version of the Android mobile operating software.
The latest and greatest in television ultra-high definition screens are expected to be on display, but analysts expected them to land in the market with a thud similar to that made by 3D televisions.
NXP Semiconductors NV expects its first automotive-grade 5-nanometer chip built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to become available for automakers within one-and-a-half years at the earliest, following demand for better computing performance and energy efficiency for connected vehicles, a company executive said yesterday. That would mean a significant upgrade from the 16-nanometer technology NXP adopted in its existing series of microprocessors. NXP chief technology executive Lars Reger made the remarks during a media briefing yesterday in Taipei. The latest updates came after NXP unveiled its plan to source 5-nanometer capacity from TSMC in 2021. This is Reger’s first trip to
AI TREND: TSMC has been rapidly expanding capacity to meet a spike in demand for advanced packaging services, but still expects supplies to be tight for 18 months Arizona is in talks with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) about advanced chip packaging, state Governor Katie Hobbs said yesterday, which is crucial for the manufacturing of artificial intelligence (AI) chips. TSMC, which is building a US$40 billion chip factory in the US state, has not announced plans to build facilities for advanced chip packaging in the US. Advanced packaging processes stitch multiple chips together into a single device, lowering the added cost of more powerful computing. “Part of our efforts at building the semiconductor ecosystem is focusing on advanced packaging, so we have several things in the works around that
The European Commission’s digital chief yesterday said that murky Chinese laws were fueling concerns among foreign firms in the country, following discussions with Beijing officials about critical areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) and data governance. Vera Jourova, who is also the commission’s vice president, made the comments after meeting on Monday with Chinese counterparts including Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing (張國清) in the second “High-level Digital Dialogue” between the two sides. Among the concerns Jourova said she had heard about from European businesses in China was the “unpredictability of the decisions and interpretation of the laws by the regulators.” Beijing has recently implemented
EVADING US CONTROLS? ‘These surveillance chips are relatively easy to manufacture compared to smartphone processors,’ a source said about HiSilicon’s components A Huawei Technologies Co (華為) unit is shipping new Chinese-made chips for surveillance cameras in a fresh sign that the Chinese tech giant is finding ways around four years of US export controls, two sources briefed on the unit’s efforts said. The shipments to surveillance camera manufacturers from the company’s chip design unit, HiSilicon Technologies Co (海思半導體), started this year, said one of the sources and a third source familiar with the industry supply chain. One of the sources briefed on the unit said that at least some of the customers were Chinese. Huawei unveiled new smartphones in the past few weeks that
RSS