Trendspotting at CES | HSMAI Global

Insights from the HSMAI Executive THINK at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2018

HSMAI hosted our 3^rd annual Executive THINK Program at the huge (est.170,000 people) Customer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas the week of January 8^th, 2018. This was a VIP curated program which started with a comprehensive look at trends to watch for at this year’s show facilitated by Shawn DuBravac, PhD. , President of Astra Insights and former Chief Economist and Director of Research for the Consumer Technology Association and Denise Medved, VP of Sales, CTA and CES.

TRENDS as identified by Shawn DuBravac and Denise Medved

Look for the Transition from Digitalization to Datafacation

Companies have spent years collecting customer behaviour information and NOW is the time we will really begin to see the rapid fire expansion and even smarter use of turning that data into real business use.

AI or Artificial Intelligence is all the CES show floor buzz

AI fits into this data thrive with real computer vision and machine to man learning
UBER was used as an example of employing a real AI Platform – revenue managing costs. Car estimated pick up times, estimated destination arrivals, improved routes and maps based on customer usage

Speech Recognition (SR)

Companies have spent years improving their SR word error rate. A huge improvement has now occurred with just a 5% error rate which is similar to human conversational English. Look for a lot better application and acceptance in this area.

Image Recognition

This is the next frontier, and it is image, not just face! A story was shared about MGM’s new parking lot car license recognition which knows how much to charge and who to charge in their hotel parking lots in Las Vegas.

Touchless Interface

Look for touchless interface on IPads and Phones. Speech and image recognition will make swiping a thing of the past. Expect to be able to call your car in those huge mall and airport parking garages!

Augmented Reality

The future holds opportunity to have those VR glasses show costs, recommendations, menus, specials, entertainment, etc., when passing by shops or restaurants or when even buying your next car.

Self-Driving Vehicles

Expect smarter cars, and safe application of the new autonomous cars and motorcycles.

Man and machine pairing to make life better

Technology is improving lives, but not replacing human thought and touch.

Faster download speeds

Currently 2 hour movie can download in 3G in about 26 hours
When we are in 4G this same download is in 6 minutes
And in coming soon everywhere , 5G where the same download is 4 seconds!
Expected adoption in 5G by 2020, with lots of opportunities for new messaging and business application.

More TRENDS as identified by StoryTech

The World is your Co-Lab

Fail fast if needed, as a service to your customers
Test small segments and crowd sourcing platforms
Make innovators your partners
Innovation is constantly adapting

Digital Twins

AI – Swarm – lots of little smart things = one big thing
Cities are getting smarter – San Diego is a new smart city – with 3200 GE City IQ Sensors which help with safety and security
Medical twins – health care automated and personalized

Millennials make the mold

They want smart & green homes
Care deeply about safety and security
Are nuts about cats and love to share photos
They manage money differently, think Blockchain

21st Century Entertainment

TV is dead, long live the TV
TVs are in fact alive and thriving – just getting a lot smarter
Immersive is going social
Expect location based VR
Choose your own adventure – example of HBO move with producer Steven Soderbergh
Another example of AI Content Creation was with IBM Watson’s created trailers for new horror movie
Next 5 years all content will be created by AI
More haptic or kinesthetic communication to recreate the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user.

Retail Reinvention

Data driven shoppers
1 Click shopping is mandatory
Data driven apps
Retailtainment – example of Alibaba making $24B in 24 hours in a global campaign

HSMAI’s Executive THINK at CES 2018 included private tours of two of the major components of CES – Tech South (home of C-Space at Aria) and Tech East. CES 2018 had 11 official venues, and spanned over 2.5 million square feet of exhibit space with 24 product categories and more than 20 marketplaces. The first Las Vegas rain in 116 days, some significant desert flooding and a power outage didn’t stop this group from experiencing an amazing show over the two curated days and sharing ideas and solutions that look like our future!

Save the date for 2019 – CES Jan 8-11, 2019

— Fran Brasseux, HSMAI Executive Vice President