SURVEY REPORT: CES 2017 - CenturyLink...demonstrate Apple iOS and Google Android integration. Just...

SURVEY REPORT:CES 2017A report from the Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, 5–8 January 2017

Enabled by

2 DPP SURVEY REPORT CES 2017

INTRODUCTION

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is North America’s biggest trade show. Around 180,000 attendees trudge millions of square feet of exhibition space across two huge convention centres and several of the city’s vast hotels in an effort to get up close with the latest in consumer technology.

They don’t always succeed.

CES is renowned for its strange – often hilarious – product launches. This year the press enjoyed reporting the smart hairbrush and vibrating hotpants. And who can blame them?

But the real value in enduring the crush of CES is something altogether more profound. At a time when human society has never been more defined by its technology, there is a credible case for saying the trends that emerge from CES provide an intimate insight into our evolution.

The DPP recently analysed the year-on-year trends of CES in a special survey report: Decoding CES – Key Trends from the Consumer Electronics Show 2010–2016.


And at the end of Decoding CES we put our insights to the test by predicting the trends that we believed would characterise CES 2017. We said this:

2017 will see the two powerful, enduring themes of content and data move forward once more.

Immersive audio, and the immersive technology that will make use of it, will play to the human infatuation with experiences and storytelling delivered through audio-visual media.

Voice control and the smart car, meanwhile, will help solidify a newer human infatuation – with the controlling power of data. We are locked into a Faustian pact where we are prepared to give more and more of ourselves (even our voices!) in order to fulfill our insatiable desire for information. The preparedness of consumers to make that trade will see them form ever-closer bonds with those that control the data platforms.

The historic relationship between broadcaster and public will be replaced by a new one: between Internet platform owner and public.

CES 2017 has now happened. So were we proved right? In short, yes.

In the report that follows we will explore how this year’s show demonstrated an obsession with artificial intelligence, and voice control. We’ll see how immersive sound and image have remained a huge focus for development. And we’ll also see how the Internet platform owners are strengthening their relationship with the consumer.

But what we failed to spot last year was which of those Internet giants would dominate CES 2017. We didn’t realise this would be an Amazon show.


It was emotional.

CES 2017: The headlines

Toyota’s declaration of love between people and cars was the most graphic expression of a theme to be found throughout this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.

Manufacturers have always wanted consumers to fall in love with their products. But they now believe they have found a new way to our hearts. Their products, they claimed this year, are not mere pieces of technology; they are intelligent machines committed to building a better world. And voice-based interactions will be the means by which people will connect with their new machine friends.

CES product tag lines habitually promise a better life. But never before has there been so much emphasis upon people and technology inhabiting the world in harmony.

This theme of intimacy between humans and their machines pervaded all six of the key trends from the 2017 show. The key task in analysing CES 2017 is to determine to what extent the theme was marketing hype, and to what extent it can be seen as the early indicator of a genuinely new phase in our relationship with technology.


Six key trends for 2017

The Future: Available on Amazon

Amazon appeared from nowhere to push Apple and Google aside and take prime spot. The pre-eminence of Amazon is likely to be temporary. But the significance of this development is that it is further evidence that platforms are far more influential than products.

Autos are driving AI‘Intelligent’ was tagged to everything – from toothbrush to luxury car. But if the Internet of Things (IoT) does come to gain real intelligence, it may have the auto industry to thank for it.

Lifestyle TVThis was the first CES where the back of televisions was deemed at least as important as the front. In a technology world obsessed with lifestyle, the TV has had to tidy up its act. High quality displays are no longer pieces of technology – they are part of the furniture.

Immersive submerged2016 saw enormous hype around VR and AR. But in 2017 these new developments in media will be taking care of business: quietly developing their capability around the applications that always suited them best – gaming and training.

CES has a Eureka momentThe start-up zone of CES is known as Eureka Park. For many years it was tucked at the fringes of the show. But in 2017 it was the place to be. It’s a development that shows how fast technology is now moving: by the time products get to the glossy stands of the main halls, they’re already yesterday’s idea.

Worryingly wealthyThe target market for CES appears to be the anxious rich – people with the money and floorspace to fill their lives with technology. But such people may exist more in the imaginations of marketeers than reality. Are we at risk of missing what is really needed for the Internet of Things to change lives: affordable, ubiquitous connectivity?

In the report that follows we examine each of these trends in greater detail, and relate them to the longer-term trends identified in our Decoding CES report.

1

2

3

4

5

6

1


The DPP successfully predicted that CES 2017 would be all about voice-based interfaces for the so-called Internet of Things (IoT).

Google has stated publicly that they believe people need to be able to control their devices without having to hold them. Google are placing a bet that our natural inhibition about talking to inanimate objects will be overcome by our need to remain in contact with our devices while in environments – such as the car or street – where we can’t easily look at and touch them.

So in many ways it wasn’t difficult to see that voice control would become important in 2017. But what no one expected was that it would be an Amazon voice assistant, not a Google one, that would completely dominate the show.

Marketing departments can appear quite shameless in how they pick up and put down major themes from one CES to the next. Last year was all about an ability to demonstrate Apple iOS and Google Android integration. Just twelve months later Apple and Google barely got a mention: the new best friend was called Alexa.

The Future: Available on Amazon

Alexa is the voice assistant that powers the Amazon Echo device – the high-end version of which is the black tower in the picture to the left.

But Alexa turns out to be pretty free with her favours. She was often to be found in her familiar Echo incarnation, but Amazon has opened the platform to third party developers, and is just as happy for Alexa to be integrated into the devices of other manufacturers, such as LG below.

It is said that Amazon were as amazed as anyone at how much space they were given in the show. On the face of it Google – with their domination of email and web search – hold far more of the kind of data needed to deal with the tongue-tied requests many of us would in practice make of our digital assistants.

1


But as anyone who has shopped on Amazon in the last year could not fail to notice, Echo has been rather well promoted – and discounted. The smallest version is relatively cheap, and, while we know that Amazon may know rather too much about our shopping habits, it doesn’t yet have the encyclopedic knowledge of our lives held by Google. The Echo, in short, has proved a gentle way for consumers to put their toe into the murky waters of big data.

The market prominence of Amazon Alexa also coincided well with the needs of manufacturers who wanted to suggest that consumers could easily make friends with their intelligent products by having a chat with them.

If trends of recent years are to be repeated, Alexa will be far less in evidence at CES 2018. Many manufacturers will now try to develop their own voice-based assistants. Indeed a number of other bespoke voice assistants, with names ranging from Hannah to Nigel, were already on show.

So expect CES 2018 to be like the weirdest book of children’s names you ever found. And then at CES 2019 we can expect many of these characters to have already been terminated, and manufacturers will embrace whichever voice assistant is by that time pre-eminent among the Internet giants.

Why are we so confident that the other Internet leaders will be in with a shout? Because currently Amazon interaction is transactional.

Amazon’s Alexa is well suited to bossing other smart devices about. But Google, Apple and Facebook have information on us that is contextual: they know the fabric of our lives; they know what we’re like. Amazon will be aware of this. Alexa will need to evolve beyond switching things on and off, to become an assistant that knows why you want to switch things on and off. Since Amazon – and importantly many

1


other major players – don’t have the email, search engine and social media datasets to give them such insight they may form partnerships with those that do.

The real significance of this year being the Amazon show isn’t so much that they have grasped temporary control of voice. It’s what else it means to have consumers beginning to adopt voice assistants. This Consumer Technology Association poster illustrates the point well. The projected market in 2017 for digital assistants such as Amazon Echo is relatively small; but what matters is their ability to promote the smart home market – which is six times bigger.

Amazon is allegedly already finding their Echo device to be a Trojan horse into the Internet of Things. Sceptical, technology-anxious consumers are tempted by the simplicity of Echo; and once they own it they begin to use it to buy other ‘smart’ products. Gradually, imperceptibly, our lives will become populated by smart devices. We won’t particularly choose for this to happen. But just as it is already difficult to buy a TV or a printer that isn’t Internet enabled, so that will soon be true of a kettle, a door lock, or even a light bulb.

Once surrounded by connected devices we will find ourselves wanting a single operating system for our lives. Whether that OS is provided by Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft or, who knows, Facebook, we can be sure it wont be provided by any of the manufacturers to be found each January in the exhibition halls of Las Vegas.

Secretly those manufacturers know this too. And that may be why there was such fragmentation this year in how the major vendors presented themselves. Usually at CES it is as if a secret memo has gone out: in a startling example of convergent evolution, all the big players seem to present themselves in similar ways, with stands that even look the same. Not this year.

LG – who always have the first stand visitors come to on entering the main exhibition space – gave as much emphasis to their television and computer displays as to their smart home products. Sony retrenched to their heartland of sound and vision expertise. Samsung went for lifestyle and VR, but their phones seemed too hot a topic – for all the wrong reasons – to be given any prominence right now. For Huawei it was phones and tablets. And for Panasonic it was about business-to-business products: they, along with Bosch, put their emphasis on the creation of partnerships to provide services for smart infrastructure.

It was as if all these major brands were seeking to find an identity for themselves in preparation for a world dominated by Internet platform owners.

2


For the last three years almost every product at CES has been described as ‘smart’. In practice most aren’t very smart at all – just connected. This year, in a strange kind of hype inflation, everything was ‘intelligent’.

When even a toothbrush is described as having artificial intelligence, you know the term has been stretched beyond credibility.

But it’s not difficult to see where the misuse of the word ‘intelligence’, sugar-coated with voice control, has come from. Three years ago most products became connected. This meant that information about the user could be recorded and served back to them. This ‘playback’ suggested a degree of personalisation that led these products to be described as smart.

Those same products – and the technology behind them – have now evolved to be able to offer an increasingly rich set of personal data. This data may now be set in the context of other people’s data – sometimes in a community of smart-device users. In an attempt to find a word for ‘even smarter than the rather exaggerated degree of smartness we claimed to have before’, manufacturers have reached for the word ‘intelligent’ – and even the term ‘artificial intelligence’. And the reason those terms are available for misuse is because there is currently so much genuine research activity around machine learning.

Autos are driving AI

2


In order to gain some perspective on the language applied to the supposed cleverness of our household gadgets, it may be useful to attempt a definition of ‘intelligence’ in the context of technological devices. The Chief Economist for the CTA, who organise CES, assesses artificial intelligence as ‘an inflection point in perceived value’, defined by ‘depth of knowledge, fluidity of conversation, value of recommendations, AI infused adjustments and depth of change.’

These labels could be seen as a rather self-serving means of framing a consumer perception of IoT products. Although by no means experts in AI, we would define machine intelligence more generally as demonstration of an ability to be trainable, recognise patterns, predict, pre-empt, generalise, be context aware, and to act without instruction.

We’re not sure a toothbrush will ever pass such a test. But within a few years, a car just might.

The first thing to observe about the automobile section of CES this year was that it displayed the kind of amnesia seen elsewhere in the show. In 2016 almost every car manufacturer boasted about their Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integrations, which allowed a consumer’s phone and its apps to extend into their car. One might have reasonably expected that this year would have been all about the further extension of these in-car personal content environments. Not at all. In the blink of a year the manufacturers have dropped their interest in what the driver brings to their car. Now it is all about what the car brings to the driver.

2


For companies such as Nvidia and Qualcomm, and their partners such as Nauto, this vision of the future in which the car analyses both the driver and the driver’s environment, is driven by a focus on safety.

But some of the big car brands, such as Mercedes, have put the emphasis more on the driver’s health and well-being. In Mercedes’ vision, my car will have already calculated that I haven’t a hope of making my next appointment on time, and that I will therefore be in a state of stress. A quick scan of my face confirms my car’s view of me. My car then tries to reduce my stress by changing the pitch of my seat, changing the ambient lighting, pumping out a calming fragrance, and providing an in-seat massage.

Whatever the basis for these proposed new relationships between human and car, many of us do at least begin from the starting point of having an emotional relationship with our cars – unlike our toothbrushes. And the mission to develop a truly self-driving car – already sufficiently well developed to be considered a technological certainty – is ensuring serious amounts of R&D dollars are being spent on the ability of a machine to understand itself and its occupants in time and space.

It is symbolically significant that Nvidia – a market leader in graphics processing – no longer locate their stand in the main part of the show. They have moved themselves to the auto-industry hall.

In the parking lot outside, Nvidia were to be found showcasing their work with Audi to develop a truly intelligent self-driving car – one that can learn how to respond to unfamiliar environments (unlike current self-driving cars that require specific parameters, such as the clear and well-understood road markings of major roads).

This is quite a challenge. For the car to make sense of its surroundings it will have to capture the environment and understand what it is seeing. That means the car has to process thousands of data points every second.

2


Nvidia and other leaders in the field are focused on training neural networks (which are computer systems modeled on the human brain and nervous system) to respond to specific use cases and then to combine these to create an autonomous experience. Nvidia said one of their computer boards may be running four or five neural networks at any one time to help the car cope with different conditions.

But nonetheless Audi report that the progress made with Nvidia in the last twelve months has reduced their timeline for the production of what’s known as Level 4 intelligent cars by five years. Level 4 is when a car, although not fully robotic, has the intelligence to handle critical events and most new conditions by itself. Audi now project such cars will be in production by 2020 – just three years time.

At first glance such developments may appear to be a million miles from the media industry. But one only has to remember that Nvidia provides much of the graphics capability in current television and gaming, and that self-driving cars depend on an array of cameras and other sensors, which intelligent algorithms then interpret. Just as with much cutting edge technology research, there will be collateral benefits to the world of media.

When drones first appeared they shot shaky video. The need to correct this problem created a strong enough demand for developments to happen in image stabilisation. And those developments have fed back into the wider world of video capture. In the case of self-driving cars, we can expect major developments in robotic cameras, and in image recognition and contextual analysis.

What only a few years ago was a fantasy pet project for Google has now become the biggest business at CES.

3 Lifestyle TV


The television had a mixed reception at CES 2017. Wafer-thin, UHD, HDR, OLED-technology displays were the star of the LG stand. Similarly slim displays adorned the entry to the Sony stand. Both genuinely had a wow-factor.

Samsung gave significant floor space to TVs; as did TCL, Skyworth and Konka. There was a time when you couldn’t get near an 8K display at CES for the crowds. Not any more. The lack of attention paid to the Konka 8K displays below, suggests that the next big technical advance in TVs is no longer enough.

3


It was no coincidence that the displays that received the greatest interest were those of LG, Samsung and Sony, all of which had the same thing in common: they looked fabulous, while making far less of their technical characteristics than of their place in people’s homes. The TV display areas of stands have often in the past seemed to belong more to a broadcast technology show than to CES. These seemed to belong more to a department store.

The OLED technology adopted by Sony and LG, and the Quantum Dot technology promoted by Samsung, enable extraordinarily thin displays. Sound can even be projected through the display, removing the need for speakers around the edge. Suddenly TVs – such as the new one from Sony, above – were being displayed not as pieces of technology, but as works of art.

Samsung had the confidence to give one of their displays a retro case.

3


Samsung also put more effort into explaining how they could hide cables, than into explaining High Dynamic Range.

There was something oddly gratifying about this year’s rather more simple way of presenting televisions. Perhaps it was because television displays felt more consistent with the emphasis placed on fashion and lifestyle by so many other technology products – from smart watches to headphones. Or perhaps it was because for the first time the TV seemed like something for the consumer rather than the engineer. UHD and High Dynamic Range (HDR), in all its manifestations, had been seamlessly incorporated, with little fuss, as the default for the modern display – a recognition of the colossal UHD market projected for 2017 by the CTA in the poster pictured below.

4 Immersive submerged


In 2016 there was something akin to an existential crisis in media circles regarding the emergence of immersive technologies – Virtual reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and 360 Video. Did immersive technology, many asked, represent a whole new creative discipline that would change media forever?

The DPP cautioned that while immersive technologies were an important and permanent addition to the repertoire of media tools, their strengths lay in areas that overlapped with, but by no means coincided with, television. Broadcasters, we suggested, need not all rush to respond.

A visit to the out-of-show demonstration put on by Vive from HTC bore out our view.

Vive had invited developers for their platform to demonstrate their content. Around a dozen demos ran concurrently. Many were games; some were experiences and others were training or educational materials. None attempted to undertake storytelling.

There is a strong sense that Vive is quietly professionalising and extending both its technical capability and its content portfolio. It is focused on helping the development of a self-sustaining and vibrant developer community. Vive reported developers were finding success in gaming, and more recently in experiences that combine the VR world with large volumes of data – such as for the automotive and architecture industries, and Google Earth VR.

Last year Vive and Oculus Rift were pretty much the only game in town when it came to VR – and both had reached a level of excellence that confirmed VR is here to stay.

4


A year on and Oculus were not at this year’s show. Their huge stand had become the beating heart of the convention centre’s South Hall in recent years, so their absence was startling. What should we read from it? It may simply reflect the lack of new product to launch; or it may reflect uncertainty about exactly where Oculus is in its life cycle. As well as their own high-end product, Oculus are also behind the budget level Gear VR headset from Samsung, which uses a smartphone as the playing and viewing device. Sales of Gear VR are said to be very strong – and it certainly continued to attract crowds at CES. But the market for the expensive, high-end – and less portable – Oculus Rift may still be limited.

Three things became immediately apparent regarding immersive technology at CES 2017:

The first is that VR has been incorporated as an experience by a huge number of vendors. It has been normalised.

Secondly that while plenty of Chinese clones of Gear VR headsets have emerged, the pre-eminent headset is now the HTC Vive.

And thirdly that there is still a lack of content. The show boasted more 360 camera and software providers then ever before, and most produced very good image quality. However none could point to any compelling content created by their products. In short, immersive technology is still trying to work out what – apart from gaming – it is for.

It may be significant that a new immersive technology phrase has emerged – to add to the existing lexicon of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, 360 Video and Virtual Theatre. The term is Mixed Reality, and it’s all about combining VR/AR experiences with the real world. The best example of this perhaps came from Qualcomm, who demonstrated how you can select an item of furniture – such as a chair – from a

4


catalogue viewable in your headset, and then drop the item into your real world living room. The chair appears in true, 3D perspective so that you can see exactly how it would look, whether it would fit in a space, and so on.

There was a similar, equally impressive, demonstration from Intel. It’s significant however that both Qualcomm and Intel are computer chip manufacturers. They don’t create content direct to consumers; and what they demonstrated was potential rather than actual product.

The area of the show that was previously occupied by VR companies was now populated with AR products and 360 camera manufacturers. The Eureka Park start up zone, meanwhile, was similarly awash with 360 cameras, head-up displays and holographic displays, as well as innovations in VR and AR – all at early stages of development.

Overall there was emphasis upon developments in the technology – particularly around the mapping of environments. Image quality in capture has improved, but image quality in the viewing experience is still generally poor, and content virtually non-existent.

At face value this all feels horribly like 3D all over again. In 2011 every stand had a 3D deployment. By 2013 3D was dead.

The DPP still believes immersive tech is different from 3D, however. VR Gaming is already a reality. The use-case around VR and AR for training and experiential purposes is very strong. And the experience of audio-visual immersion more routinely generates a ‘wow’ factor than 3D ever did.

One shouldn’t underestimate audio in this regard. We predicted immersive audio would be a feature of this year’s show, and, while it wasn’t quite as much to the fore as we expected, it did have a strong emphasis (notably Dolby Atmos, which aims to take home surround sound to a new level). There were some significant developments in positional sound for VR – from companies such as VRTIFY, and from Ossic, below.

What should a broadcaster or television production company make of all this? The answer – as we have been saying for some time – is to keep a watching brief, but to feel no pressure to act just yet. If ever there was an area where it is appropriate to be a follower rather than early adopter, this is it. There is a huge amount of technology development to play out – and vast mountains of R&D cash still to be spent – before immersive experience really surfaces.

5 CES has a Eureka moment


Although CES has for many years sprawled all over Las Vegas, the focus of the show has always been the three huge halls of the Las Vegas Convention Centre (LVCC).

There has been a growing sense in the last couple of years however that the LVCC offers a glimpse of the recent past rather than the future. CES is, in essence, a hardware show. Yet the most significant technology developments now happen in software. By the time those innovations have found a hardware form factor – often from a second tier, budget manufacturer – they don’t feel innovative at all.

This year it was almost as if all the attendees had come to the same view.

CES now has a second Convention Centre – the Sands. This venue has two further vast exhibition halls. The lower one – around 20% of the exhibition space of the entire show – is Eureka Park, a start up zone.

5


Eureka Park used to be a sad little area tucked away at the fringe of the show. But now it has taken centre stage – and carries such energy that much of the LVCC feels subdued by comparison.

Most innovations in Eureka Park do have a hardware implementation – although often in a pre-release or demo form. And the themes covered largely repeat those of the LVCC. But the level of credibility is generally higher, and the commitment to solving a problem more convincing.

This is the place, for example, where one finds ‘good technology’ – really worthwhile assistive tools such as an airbag belt to reduce the risk of hip fractures when elderly people fall; a visual interpretation service for the visually impaired, using the camera in AR glasses; and the first tactile tablet for the blind and visually impaired.

Innovative use of haptics – the sense of touch gained by applying force or movement – was a feature of a number of Eureka products.

This was also the place where we saw a response to concerns about the security of connected devices. There were credible low cost innovations for the home, such as eBlocker, and for on the move, from Keezel. Both these – and others – could be of genuine use to small and medium sized companies working in media.

Of course even the best of the companies in the Eureka zone are unlikely to be around for long. Most genuine consumer technology innovations require scale – either in the data set needed to be truly smart (or even intelligent), or in market base – and the Eureka moment for many of these companies will be when they get a call from Google or one of the other giants.

Worryingly wealthy6


Many of us thought that the way you trained a child to sleep was to send them to bed early every night, and give them short shrift if they dared appear downstairs before the morning. It seems we were wrong. If CES technologies are to be believed we should be filling their pillow, their bed, their tablet computer and their room with apps and sensors to monitor and measure them into a state of optimal slumber.

And if those children do venture out of their rooms, they may find a Mum and Dad that wants to impose on them the ‘intelligent’ technology they have bought to monitor their own skin, breath, oxygen, teeth and water.

It’s hard to know whether connected technology has responded to human needs, or if human needs have been invented in order to sell technology. There is evidence to support the view it is the latter. Is it really useful to have a water bottle so smart it needs 64 components?

In many respects connected technology has become disconnected – from reality.

There was something endearing about Sony showing their Japanese roots by emphasizing technology that could help make better use of small spaces. But for most other manufacturers the smart home is huge, spacious, modern, highly connected – and on one open-plan level. The robots can move more freely that way.

There is a serious point behind all of this. In some respects almost all new technology is only for the well off. The world is divided into technology haves and have-nots. But on the other hand many would now see Internet access as a basic utility; and the lack of Internet access as an indicator of poverty.

6


So what are the problems that normal people – rather than the neurotically wealthy – would appreciated having solved for them by connected technology? Or, more positively, what is the next set of experiences that normal people would genuinely like connected technology to provide for them? We’re just beginning to understand what the Internet means. When will we understand what it means for the world to connect its physical fabric to a virtual one?

The answer won’t be found in a specific device. It will be revealed by our underlying technology infrastructure – when low cost high speed connectivity is everywhere, for example.

Nowadays almost every device requires two things before it can be used: power and a wireless connection. Power gets plenty of attention at CES; perhaps it is time that connectivity did also.


In the DPP Survey Report, Decoding CES – Key Trends from the Consumer Electronics Show 2010–2016 significant technologies were listed for each CES from 2010.

These technologies were given a score of 1–10, where 10 is white hot, and 1 is almost stone cold. These were then translated into heat circles, where degree of heat is indicated by both size and colour. A large dark red circle corresponds to a heat score of 9; the tiniest blue circles have a heat of just 1.

One of the striking characteristics of CES between 2010 and 2016 was how most technologies in time fade away – but refuse to die.

3D

Tablet/Second Screen

IPTV

4K/UHD

Android v Apple

Video Cameras

Smart Car

Ultrabook

Smartphone

3D Printing

Windows 8

Internet of ings

Wireless Audio

Smart Watches

Immersive (VR)

Smart Home

Robots

Drones

2010 2011 2013 20142012 2015 2016

This remained true in 2017: almost every significant technology from 2016 was to be found present again this year. However there were some shifts in emphasis in 2017 that make it appropriate to recalibrate the table above.

CES 2017 in context

figure 1:Technology Heat Map 2010–2016


3D has finally fallen off the radar. Ultrabooks could be found on one or two stands; but their impact is now so low they can reasonably be described as no longer significant. The same is true of tablets. IPTV – in the sense of a feature being made of a TV’s connectedness, rather than a TV just happening to be connected – is just hanging in as significant. Meanwhile it now feels appropriate to have a category that is high-end displays rather than specifically 4K/UHD. All displays now will be at least 4K.

The presence of Amazon at CES 2017 requires a relabeling of Android v Apple as a theme. It is now appropriate to refer to this as Internet Operating Systems (Internet OS).

There are also some new themes to be added. As predicted in Decoding CES, voice control and immersive audio can be added this year. Artificial Intelligence can also be added. Quite where AI and IoT start and end is a moot point; they are discussed in the show both together and separately. It is now appropriate to list simply high-end displays rather than to focus on 4K/UHD. We have maintained smart watches and the smart home this year. However the usefulness of differentiating the smart home and smart watches from other IoT technologies, such as those around health, is rapidly diminishing. Technologies which specifically address security are now worth tracking independently however.

A new Technology Heat Map is presented in Figure 2 below. The Heat Map tracks the last five years – from 2013.

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Voice Assistant

AI

Internet of �ings

Smart Car

Smart Home

4K/UHD

High-End Displays

Immersive Tech

Internet OS

Wireless Audio

Drones

Watches

Robots

Immersive Audio

Video Cameras

3D Printers

Security

Smartphones

IPTV

figure 2:CES Technology Heat Map 2013–2017


As Figure 2 shows, voice assistants have sprung from nowhere to be the hottest theme for CES 2017. The last technology to have this kind of sudden impact was the tablet in 2011. Within two years the tablet had slipped into the background. We can expect voice assistants to do something similar, although, much like the smartphone they could well become key tools that remain indispensable, but no longer the centre of attention.

In Decoding CES we noted that key technologies at CES tend to have four year cycles – the duration of a kind of hype half-life after which they lose their glow. We identified a four year cycle as beginning at the point at which a technology achieves its first heat score of 7 (out of 10) or higher. On our heat map 7 corresponds to a large amber circle.

Sometimes hot technologies fade because they failed (3D for example); and sometimes they fade because they become mainstream (such as the tablet computer).

Several of the prominent technologies in 2017 are part way through their four-year cycle.

As can be seen in Figure 3, below, video cameras, wireless audio, and smart watches are already slipping into the background. UHD has now become mainstream and a new technology has emerged, which is more simply the high-end display.

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Voice Assistant

AI

Internet of �ings

Smart Car

Smart Home

4K/UHD

High-End Displays

Immersive Tech

Internet OS

Wireless Audio

Drones

Watches

Robots

Immersive Audio

Video Cameras

3D Printers

Security

Smartphones

IPTV

figure 3:CES Technology Heat Map 2013–2017


The Internet of Things may buck the four-year trend, since it has stayed consistently hot for four years, and is unlikely to fade strongly in 2018. The smart car is likely to stay hot for another year or two, and the smart home also.

But what is perhaps most interesting about this analysis is that by 2019 it may have broken down: it could become meaningless to analyse CES using so many hardware categories. It is significant that Internet OS (formerly Android v Apple) is a software theme that has been strong for four years, and may get even stronger yet. Similarly AI is a software innovation; and voice assistants may well be replaced by ubiquitous, integrated voice control software.

The DPP observed in CES Decoded that:

If we want to get the steer on the future we may soon do better to forego the major trade shows for the software developer conferences. After all, the technology hardware of CES is increasingly just an exoskeleton for the software inside.

Everything about CES 2017 confirms this view.


It’s a weird truism that the most influential company at CES is never actually there. For many years CES was all about Apple, but Apple themselves didn’t exhibit. In 2013 the Apple influence waned, and Google began to pervade the show – without being there of course. But at CES 2017 there was a powerful new absent presence, Amazon – and they spoke a thousand words.

Vendors used to demonstrate integration with Apple iOS or Google Android; now it’s Amazon Alexa – the voice control behind the Amazon Echo device. Why this shift to Amazon? Because when you’re fixated by the power of love, but only have vapourware, Alexa offers sweet nothings.

Consumer electronics is all about making people want to buy pieces of technology. But, given that most of us have an uneasy relationship with technology, that’s not straightforward. When consumer technology got connected it also got more technical. A paradox emerged: our devices amazed us with what did – but also exasperated us with their complexity. Apple romantics, however, seemed untroubled by this: they were blinded by desire.

CONCLUSION


But then along came claims of Artificial Intelligence, and suddenly it seems as if the whole industry has a shortcut to people’s hearts. AI is about the ability of machines to learn from the data they collect from the world around them, and then act autonomously. Once they’re sufficiently educated, they can, in theory, predict or pre-empt: they can appear to know more about us and our surroundings than we do. And that’s emotional.

In reality it’s very difficult for a device to achieve true, reliable and appropriate intelligence: the amount and range of data required is too great, and the computing power to run the neural networks too specialist. In a leap of marketing faith, however, manufacturers have seen the potential of AI, claimed their products are intelligent, and assumed the very act of having a ‘conversation’ with such an intelligent product can only lead to love. And revenue.

Amazon Alexa just happened to be the right voice at the right time. Google also has a voice product – Google Home. Apple has Siri. Microsoft has Cortana. But Amazon has successfully marketed and sold its Echo device during 2016, and by opening up its platform to third party integration provided the obvious way in for manufacturers who, frankly, needed a shortcut to making their products appear intelligent, and adorable.

In practice this almost always means saying ‘Alexa, ask (my gizmo) to switch on something.’ But not a lot more.

Does any of this matter? And, even if it does, does it matter for media? The answer to both questions is yes. Humans like mobile technology, and voice is a better interface when on the move than clicks and touches. Meanwhile machine intelligence is coming. The next biggest Vegas trade show after CES is SEMA – an automotive product show. The automobile industry wants automated cars to become a reality.


That needs intelligence. And much like putting a man on the moon gave us non-stick frying pans, the mapping and interpretation of environments required for automated cars will transform the way we work with media.

Media itself got barely a look in at CES 2017. Some gorgeous TVs, and plenty of VR; but all heads were turned by attention seeking, ‘intelligent’ lifestyle assistants. They were this year’s crush. But never write off the power of content. Try saying ‘Alexa, turn on my favourite TV show.’ See how you feel when that programme appears. Now that’s love.

And that’s why if there is one message for content creating companies to come out of CES 2017, it is this: stay focused.

Consumer technology has become obsessed by the market opened up by the connected-life. When every aspect of human existence – even our asleep – can be technologised, there’s money to be made. But manufacturers will manufacture for a hundred years and struggle to create anything that connects with people like audio-visual content – films, TV, radio and music. As people have more and more means of consuming content, in more and more environments, the demand for such content will only increase.

The winners will be those that consistently make great content, and those that deliver that content most effectively, via the most appropriate and popular platforms.

What is exciting for the neutral observer, and scary for media companies, is that if we try and look ahead five years it is very difficult to predict who those winners will be.


This DPP production was written by Mark Harrison, in collaboration with the BBC’s Head of Technology

Direction Ali Shah. Mark and Ali would also like to thank Richard Robbins from the BBC Blue Room for

his insights. Photographs were by Mark Harrison. Design was by Vlad Cohen.

About the DPP

The DPP is the media industry’s business change network. Originally founded by UK Broadcasters the

BBC, ITV and Channel 4, it is now a not-for-profit company with an international membership base

drawn from the whole media supply chain – broadcasters and distributors to manufacturers and

service providers, production to post production, trade bodies to educational institutions. The DPP

harnesses the collective intelligence of that membership to generate insight, enable change and create

market opportunity. For more information, or to enquire about membership, visit

www.digitalproductionpartnership.co.uk.

About Century Link

CenturyLink is a global IT solutions leader that powers the needs of businesses of all sizes through our

hybrid IT services including public and private cloud, data centre colocation, managed hosting and

network services.

Every day we help our clients to deliver agility, innovation and speed to market for their businesses.

Every minute they harness the scalability and economics of cloud-based technologies.

It’s the combination of our unified customer approach, broad managed services capabilities and global

reach that makes CenturyLink EMEA stand out.

www.centurylink.co.uk

This publication is copyright © Digital Production Partnership Ltd 2017. All rights reserved.

http://www.digitalproductionpartnership.co.uk

http://www.centurylink.co.uk

SURVEY REPORT: CES 2017 - CenturyLink...demonstrate Apple iOS and Google Android integration. Just...

Documents

Transcript of SURVEY REPORT: CES 2017 - CenturyLink...demonstrate Apple iOS and Google Android integration. Just...