LAS VEGAS — Apple does not exhibit at C.E.S. and its executives haven’t deigned to speak at the event for years. Yet the company’s shadow looms large.
For one, there are the rows and rows of booths dedicated to iPad cases, iPod docks and an endless array of other accessories for Apple products.
Sony’s new Xperia Ion cellphone, part of Sony’s focus on improving user experience.And Apple employees have been spotted roaming the halls, scouting the competition or perhaps looking for accessories for the company’s stores.
But Apple’s presence is more subtle as well. Take one tech buzzword — “user experience” — that was particularly prominent in the product presentations this year. The expression refers to a concern for how all the elements of a technology product — hardware, software and services — work together so that people actually enjoy using it.
Apple was among the earliest and best-known practitioners of that philosophy in its product design. The company’s late chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, long insisted that Apple make its own computer software and hardware to ensure that the two would run smoothly together. As it entered the era of iPods, iPhones and iPads, Apple went a step further with online services, including iTunes and iCloud, that make it simple to buy entertainment and back up data from the devices.
At C.E.S., everyone at Sony seemed to have received the memo about user experience. In a press release, “C.E.S. 2012: Sony Delivers New User Experience for Consumers,” the electronics maker used the expression
three more times, in case people didn’t get the drift. In their presentations, Sony executives also used the term, to emphasize how well its many new devices, from portable game machines to cellphones to
Blu-ray players, work with an online entertainment network stocked with movies and music.
At a meeting with a group of reporters, Kazuo Hirai, executive deputy president of Sony, said he had even set up a so-called user experience organization within Sony dedicated to
making sure all of its product groups coordinate so that Sony services, software and hardware work well together.
Meanwhile, Stephen Elop, the chief executive of Nokia, used the term during a news conference to defend the competitiveness of the company’s new Lumia 900 smartphone, even though it doesn’t run on the fastest quad core processors. “Quad core doesn’t mean quad performance or quad-improved user experience,” he said.
Although no one likes to admit they’re following Apple’s lead, James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, said he considered energetic use of the term “user experience” a tip-off. “They use it as code for, ‘We can do what Apple does,’” he said.
At Sony’s news conference, Howard Stringer, the chief executive of the company, was asked about Apple’s ambitions in television. He responded that Mr. Jobs had married hardware and software more effectively at the beginning of the century than anyone else, but that Sony was poised to do the same.
He concluded with a somewhat awkward present-tense comment about Mr. Jobs, who died in October: “He’s a fierce competitor.”