HUA HIN, Thailand - Record
numbers of visitors are expected this week at the
International Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas as global gadget makers scramble to showcase
their new toys and technology. Organizers expect
more than 140,000 visitors and a higher than usual
3,100 exhibitors, up from 2,500 in 2010.
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer
gave the company's last CES keynote on Monday as
the software giant brings 15 years of event
attendances to a close. The speech itself was
pretty unremarkable and evidence that the company
is still playing catch-up; touting Windows 8
tablets and mobile phones when
Apple and Google are already
running away with the market.
Chip-maker
Intel was also on the tablet train at the CES with
a new Atom-powered device from Lenovo on display.
Intel's new processor, dubbed Clover Trail, is due
for release in the second half of the year when a
slew of hybrid tablet-laptop devices are likely to
hit the market.
A foray into the
burgeoning smart-phone market is also expected
from Intel, which has outlined deals with Motorola
and Lenovo to provide its new Atom chips for their
handsets. The move is a direct swipe at competitor
ARM, which has dominated so far with
micro-processors in almost every smart-phone on
the market. Intel's new Atom chip, codenamed
"Medfield", needs to better rival units from ARM
if the company is going to make any headway in the
industry.
Google boss Eric Schmidt took
the stage to tout "the next big thing" -
Android-powered home devices. His vision is to
have all of the regular household electronic
devices such as televisions, washing machines,
refrigerators, all wired together and connected
via a network - naturally using Google's software.
The company hopes that version 4 of
Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, will address the
fragmentation issues that afflicted earlier
versions of the software. There were too many
variants of the same platform running on different
hardware, resulting in some applications working
on some handsets but not on others.
Google
TV was also plugged by Schmidt as the only service
integrating the television experience with the
browsing experience. The search giant is clearly
angling for a monopoly in this arena. "We've
argued quite strongly that people will watch more
television because of Google TV. They won't have
to go anywhere else. They won't go to another
screen."
Perhaps, but LG, Samsung and
Lenovo showcased television sets with more
interactive features, functionality and online
connectivity. Voice-activated Smart TVs from
Samsung were on display alongside 3D sets from
Sony that do not require glasses to view the 3D
effect. The new flat-screen plasma and LED TV's
employ technology called autostereoscopic 3D,
which creates the illusion of depth by
incorporating thousands of tiny mirrors within the
display itself.
The CES seems to be
changing direction once again as it has done with
the shift in technology and consumer preferences
since the event started in 1967. The desktop
personal computer era is coming to a close and the
handheld computing device is taking the digital
spotlight.
Analysts claim the show is
losing clout as big names such as Apple, Hewlett
Packard, Facebook, Dell and now Microsoft cease
attend. Product release cycles have also changed
as companies are pushed to get new lines out
before the year-end holiday spending season; this
makes a January trade show somewhat dry for new
products, releases and upgrades.
The CES
is still the world's largest tech trade show, but
major players such as Google, Apple and Amazon are
looking for a captive audience, which they can get
by hosting their own events at which the hype and
attention they want for their own product releases
don't get lost in the crowds and the buzz of
160,000 square meters of exhibit space and
escalating costs of attendance.
Search Google tweaked its search
services again this week to integrate them with
content from its social platform, Google+. For
those that opt-in, by clicking a new button on
Google's home page, the results will be more
personalized as they draw in images, news and
comments posted on the social network. The new
service has been called "Search Plus Your World".
Twitter lambasted the search company over
the service, claiming that it would be bad for
consumers, web publishers, and news organizations,
not least Twitter, which will see its own results
drop in favor of those from Google's social
network.
Privacy advocates at the
Electronic Privacy Information Center also
criticized the service and considered a formal
complaint to the Federal Trade Commission on the
grounds that it raises serious privacy and
antitrust concerns.
Google has been
pushing its own social web aspirations at the
expense of rivals Twitter and Facebook and now it
is excluding results from both networks in its
latest effort to make searching more personal.
Google+ has 40 million users, according to the
company; Facebook is still a long way ahead with
800 million.
Industry Around 300
workers at a Chinese Foxconn electronics factory
threatened a mass suicide this week over working
conditions and pay. The company produces
components for Apple's iPhone and iPad, amongst
electronics for a number of other tech giants;
however its failings in employee relations were
painfully evident this week.
Suicide rates
are already a high-profile issue at Foxconn, where
14 workers took their own lives in 2010; the
company has since installed safety nets and
employed councilors in an attempt to alleviate the
problem. The latest protest was over a pay rise
and compensation that had been denied to
employees, who were finally talked off the roof of
a building by local officials.
Apple,
which vies with ExxonMobil to be the world's most
valuable company by market capitalization, had its
highest share price to date this week when company
stock peaked at US$423.24 on Tuesday.
Would-be Chinese buyers of Apple's latest
iPhone were less pleased with the company's
performance on Friday when it made a mess of
launching sales of the gadget in Beijing.
Customers who had waited overnight in
sub-freezeing temperatures outside Apple's store
in the Sanlitun district pelted the outlet with
eggs after it failed to open.
In Shanghai,
where sales were reportedly to start at 7am, one
potential customer was told on arriving at 6am
that they were already sold out, Bloomberg
reported.
Martin J Young is an
Asia Times Online correspondent based in
Thailand.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times
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