If you want to see next year’s consumer electronics trends, go the current year’s CEATEC. The largest CE show in Japan, held in Makuhari for at least the past 7 years, plays host to products and their components from all over the Asia Pacific area, where most of the CE industry innovation resides.
In a nutshell, based on what was observed at this show, I can practically put money on the items below being the CE Trends for 18 months. You can see many of these reflected in the winners of the CEATEC Innovation Awards, a panel on which I’m a judge.
- 4K Television Sets + 8K, 3D is dead again and hey, why not buy a 4K set?
- AR Headsets, likely trending towards VR – I’m thinking AR leads to head-mounted Android Wear, and, heaven forbid, iGlasses
- Better device user experiences, totally non-techie
Over the next 3 years, probably the following:
- “Simple” Robots transforming healthcare and family interaction
- Family, home, and building monitoring solutions, healthcare
- 5G wireless
The Under-appreciated Heroes of our Industry
I feel it’s harder to innovate full products these days. Many CE technologies we see in the pipeline are simply better, smaller, faster, higher resolution, more efficient versions of what’s come before. The real shining star of this industry is the component manufacturers and what they’ve been capable of. The second rarely told story is the countless research hours creating amazing solutions most American consumers will never hear of.
Auri's Blog 