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That was one of the conclusions that CEA statisticians reached in a survey of CES buyers, the data for which were revealed Tuesday night at the organization’s annual pre-CES End-of-Year Trend Analysis. (Holiday sales stats were also presented; please see Dealerscope’s CEA Industry Forum article, referenced as Related content within this writeup.)
Among the categories expected to pique show-goers’ interest in Vegas come January are wireless & wired devices (60 percent), with lifestyle electronics and Internet-based multimedia services neck and neck within the 30-to-35-percent range.
Tagged most often as “hot” categories by buyers were apps for mobile devices and tablets (tied, with both cited by 89 percent of respondents), devices for streamed content and Internet-enabled TVs (82 and 81 percent, respectively), devices designed to enable sharing content and cloud computing (72 and 71 percent, respectively), and smart appliances (70 percent). Health-related technologies are up and coming as an area of interest (60 percent), while 3DTV drew a “hot” citation by around 57 percent of respondents.
Shawn DuBravac, CEA’s chief economist, hypothesized that what the show will make clear when the dust settles is “how certain devices will substitute for others, and which will gain traction” – the result of what he termed “a friction that will exist between pulling computing power out of” some devices to make them leaner, while adding computing power into other devices. “The next big driver in computing is interconnectivity, not power,” he said. DuBravac added that besides tablet devices, which “will continue to emerge, even though 10 percent of households already own one,” Ultrabooks – ultra-thin and ultra-light laptop computers – “will be a major theme at CES; expect 30-plus introductions there.
“Last year, more than 100 tablets were introduced at the show,” DuBravac recalled. “This year, you can expect manufacturers to play to all the sweet-spot sizes at the 2012 CES,” introducing hybrid tablet/phones in the 5-inch size, along with tablets in 7-, 9- and 10-inch sizes.
Steve Koenig, CEA director of industry analysis, pointed to manufacturers’ increasing provision of “customizable” experiences through their hardware, which includes both primary devices and their accessories along with services and software apps. “There is no shortage of opportunities for consumers to leverage theses devices” as both home and business solutions, he said.
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