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It’s that time of year again where we all make the annual migration to Las Vegas to see if we can uncover something earth shattering in consumer technology. After spending the last 10 years going to the show as the CTO for HP, this year will be different. I will be attending CES this year with press credentials.
Rather than doing my normal video predication of what would be “hot” at CES, this post is about what I feel will be over-hyped at this year’s CES. As in any industry, the hype cycle feeds on itself and you need to look no further than CES. You can’t blame the companies. It’s hard to get heard when 2,700 other companies are competing for attention.
So what will be the over-hyped innovations this year?
Ultra Books
Webopedia’s defines ultrabook as :
… a new category of notebook computers that seeks to fill the gap between lightweight laptops and tablets. Intel dubbed the ultrabook category when it announced it would be directing its mobile computing efforts towards a new class of laptops that would offer an extremely thin (less than 20 millimeters, or 0.8 inches), high-powered, long battery life, near instant-on and instant-resume capabilities, and fast storage, typically via solid state disk drives (SSDs), all in a sub $1,000 package.
So why the hype? Its something new in a category that is hard to get excited about. How many different ways can you describe some minor feature in a next generation laptop. What’s frustrating is that the characteristics for an ultrabook have been around for years (one example is the Envy 133 in 2008). What’s different this time? The price point and the sheer number of companies rushing to bring products to market.
3D anything
For the last three years, 3D has been the buzzword of the show. Everyone was demonstrating it in their booths. We’ve all heard and seen it before. So, rather than solving the one area of innovation that is holding 3D back (auto-stereoscopic: 3D with no glasses), companies are once again ramping up the hype machines in hopes that no one notices that nothing has changed from last year.
Tablets
Last year, more than 100 tablets were announced and shared. During an event for a major newspaper, I was asked to make a prediction from last year’s CES. My answer? That most of the 100 tablets announced would never see the light of day. Guess what - I was right. My fear this year is that we will have a repeat of 2011 - the market getting swamped with tablet computers that are more of the same. What’s needed in this space is someone with enough guts not to play follow the leader.
At I mentioned above, at this year’s CES, I will be on the look-out to see if my predications of the innovation over-hype is accurate. If you want to follow, I will be posting my thoughts here at Forbes.com and over on twitter at @philmckinney hashtag #philatCES.
