CES 2022 Trends Revisited: Why The Year’s Hottest Tech Doesn’t Always Succeed - millardfornow38

Editor's Letter

As I write this, 2022 International CES–the Las Vegas-based tech mega-showcase erst known as the Consumer Electronics She–is winding down. So ends four days of demos, meetings, presentations, parties, and rhodomontade.

For journalists and civilians alike, CES offers a great way to proctor the submit of technology. An event with piles of product introductions, engrossing ideas, and out-of-left-field innovations suggests a healthy tech ecosystem, with plenty for consumers to get jazzed about in the approach year. A lackluster CES foretells a grim tech landscape.

Fortunately, CES 2022–which put roughly 20,000 new products happening display–was chockablock with great new stuff. The big themes were smart HDTVs, Ultrabooks (supermodel-thin laptops built around Intel's latest chips), and–unavoidably–Android tablets.

Which way that 2022 volition live the year of brainy televisions, MacBook Air lookalikes, and tablets that Don River't start with a minuscular i, right?

Not so fast, pardner.

CES may be a intense barometer for technical school's health in aggregate, but its guidance on the specifics–on which products or product categories will be hits in the coming 12 months–can be shaky.

Consider the events of the past four years. CES 2009 was all about the netbook. These cheap miniskirt-notebooks–generally running Windows XP–burst onto the view in 2007 approximately. Consumers loved them and wide their wallets in appreciation. In short ordain, PCWorld.com's Top 10 Netbooks chart became one of the most common pages along our web site.

The ram came hard, however. Because these machines were underpowered, uninspiring, and often indistinguishable from one another, sales soon caudate bump off. The 2022 introduction of the iPad, jointly with the ongoing development of highly in working order unprecedented smartphones, helped shuffling netbooks a far less attractive purchase–even though many an are priced at well nether $500.

Asus Eee Pad MeMo 370T tablet — Asus Eee Dramatize MeMo 370T tablet

Another OMG product at CES 2009 was an awing three-button, 3G- and Bluetooth-enabled watch phone from LG. After visual perception it, I wanted IT. A lot. And I thought others would also. Chalk that indefinite up to middle-age exuberance and a willful decision to neglect history. My having been a Dick Tracy fan as a kidskin may also have factored into information technology.

In 2022, you may recall, CES attendees were gaga terminated e-readers. They were deemed then promising that the prove's promoters accorded them their own "Tech Zone" on the Las Vegas Convention Center floor. I think of attendance product demos on at least cardinal of them and then troubled to settle which one I wanted for myself. Spring Design's top-notch Alex Reader? The Plastic Logic Que? The iRiver Story?

The correct serve clothed to be, "none of the above." The e-reader revolution didn't materialize (thanks, again, to tablets and smarter smartphones). Folks inactive buy e-readers, but not in the volume that most industry observers had anticipated.

LG Google TV — LG Google Television receiver

CES 2022 wrought up as a coming-verboten party for 3D everyplace: HDTVs, camcorders, you name it. The diligence oversold 3D; consumers as a whole didn't bite. At this point, most observers continue to trust that 3D TVs will sooner or later become commonplace, as 3D glasses improve and 3D content becomes more readily available. I'll give 3D a grade of Incomplete for now, and revisit it in a few years.

What roughly this class's CES standouts? TVs are back, and they're more adequate and connected than ever, even if 3D isn't their main marketing point. (see Saint Patrick Miller's "Why 3D Boob tube International Relations and Security Network't 'Cool' at CES This Year"). Meantime, Ultrabooks are out to prove that they're not this year's interlingual rendition of the netbook. And Android tablet makers are hoping to generate some noise in a commercialize dominated by the iPad.

So let me get on on tape right here as saying that I consider totally three testament find great success in 2022. And I also have a fantastic watch phone that I'd the like to sell you cheap.

For more blogs, stories, photos, and video from the commonwealth's largest consumer electronics show, cheque PCWorld's skilled coverage of CES 2022.