CES Asia is the newest offshoot of the Consumer Technology Association’s gigantic iconic CES gadget show, and it’s already gaining steam. The original CES traditionally takes place in Las Vegas, but last year the CTA started a show in Shanghai, and it’s already a whopping 50 percent bigger for this, the second year.
Why Asia you might wonder — why Shanghai in particular? Because it’s a hotbed for what’s next.
Think about it: Over the years there has been a transformation of where gadgets come from. At first it was Japanese giants — companies like Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba. That was the 80s and the 90s. Then in the 90s and the 2000s, we moved towards these Korean companies — LG and Samsung. And then in recent years, we have Chinese companies like ZTE, Huawei, and Xiaomi. So it makes sense for the CTA to open its new show here, rather than in Seoul or Tokyo.
What are we looking forward to seeing? One of the big things is going to be self-driving cars, and automotive technology in general. Cars were a huge force at CES this year, and it’s interesting to watch as the technology creeps into them more and more. It used to just be gadgets that we would see; but lately vehicles are every bit as popular as computers.
We’re also going to see a lot from the “Internet of Things” — the big buzz word everyone loves talking about. Smart homes, connected homes. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of this show. One of the challenges of this space is that everyone wants to be the big company that powers your home. They want your doorbell to connect to your toaster, to connect to your refrigerator. However, right now, most of those things don’t actually talk to each other. We’re looking at this show to see which company comes in and tries to solve that problem.
The other big thing that we’re looking for at this show is drones, which we’ve seen boom unlike anything. There’s going to be a gigantic cage full of drones zipping around; it should be quite a spectacle to watch.
We’ll come to you with another video, from the show floor showing you some of these spectacles, so look for that in the days to come!
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