Just as the holidays are winding down, Christmas comes again for tech enthusiasts as International CES takes over Las Vegas each year in early January. The 2011 event featured over 2,700 exhibitors showing off the latest and greatest gadgets to hit the market. Attendees surpassed 140,000 with a record breaking 30,000 hailing from outside the United States, according to preliminary figures. Tablets (more than 80 were announced) and tablet accessories, such as those by Targus, topped the list of show floor trends along with wireless 4G LTE, connected TV and 3D technologies, smart appliances, electric vehicles, including Ford’s newly unveiled Ford Focus Electric, and all things mobile.
There were countless products to check out at the show, but tablets including Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, Android devices and the Playbook, which runs on Blackberry’s own unique operating system, drew the biggest swarms. 3D technology was another hot topic, although the consensus was that developers have a while before the general public truly embraces it. Everyone seems anxious to toss the glasses. We also heard a lot about Intel’s power efficient Sandy Bridge chips, which are designed to greatly improve video display and video speed encoding, along with the latest innovations in smartphones with 4G capabilities.
There were numerous parties, dinners and press events to woo the media, Pepcom and Showstoppers being two. According to a recent news release, Showstoppers reported a new attendance record of more than 1,300 journalists, analysts and bloggers at their invitation-only affair. It should come as no surprise that loads of CES related articles and posts have begun flooding the Web, in addition to more than 158,000 CES centric tweets counted thus far.
So, given the facts, those of you who were not in or around the Las Vegas Convention Center January 6th through the 10th can probably begin to imagine the energy level which propagated throughout one of the biggest and most successful events in CES history. Consumers will have plenty of new innovations to look forward to in the coming months. And if the public’s interest can be measured by the triumph of CES 2011, we should assume that the tech industry will play an integral role in the economy bouncing back. As long as consumers, investors and the media continue to find technological advancement irresistible, we can bank on cool new gizmos and a surge in economic growth.
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