Insights from Three Decades at CES
I have had the privilege of attending CES for three decades. By not attending every year I have built perspective on the evolving tech landscape and I wanted to share some of my insights and findings.
In 2005, I attended my first CES. I was working at Time Warner Cable at the time and our CEO, Glenn Britt was speaking on a panel with Brian Roberts (Comcast), Charlie Ergen (Dish), and Eddy Hartenstein (Directv). Their talk was focused on the future of TV and the threat of a non-linear format thanks to DVRs. They spoke about HDTV and the show that year was flooded with plasma TVs and rear lit DLP TVs. Fast forward to today. I just returned home from the 2020 CES show, no longer titled the Consumer Electronics Show. The name change was evident in the vendors and attendees. Below are my reflections on how tech has changed over the past three decades.
In 2005 at my first CES broadband internet was just taking off, the iPhone had yet to be released and people were in love with their Blackberries. The show included new dedicated car navigation devices provided by Garmin and TomTom as well as thousands of digital cameras. Cramming more megapixels into a digital camera and adding zoom capabilities was a big thing back then as well. The show was well attended by consumers and industry insiders. It was like walking through a giant Circuit City electronics store, remember those? As a cable company guy I was most focused on the TVs, the DVRs and a bit of the tech that would be enabled by high speed data. Coinciding with the CES show that year was the 22nd annual AVN Awards and Adult Entertainment Expo. It was fascinating to see the intersection of these two industries. While sex toys and gadgets were presented, HD Porn was the rage of that show. How would DVR, DVD and HD change adult entertainment? It was a taboo subject and one that the cable industry had to tread lightly upon. The 2005 CES event featured Bill Gates as the keynote. He was showing off the new Windows Media Center and the demo went horribly wrong when he suffered the blue screen of death. Just think how big an opportunity Microsoft had in 2005 to steer digital media, yet it never happened for them. In 2005 even the logo highlighted the international nature of the sow as so many of the attendees were from outside the USA.
I returned to CES in January 2014 as an adviser to Rachio a smart sprinkler company that was preparing to launch their first product. While Rachio did not have a booth at CES, we had several meetings with potential distribution partners and wanted to walk the show floor to understand how iOT tech companies were launching their products. In the nine years I had been away from CES a lot had changed. Plasma TVs had been replaced by LED ultrathin TVs, GPS and Cameras were gone replaced by smartphones from hundreds of manufacturers who had found a way to combine multiple devices into one, Blueray players were a thing although the streaming services were on the rise and apps were all the rage. It was fascinating to see how the smartphone had changed the technology landscape for so many companies. Everyone had to have an app and to be part of the smartphone ecosystem. The cable companies while still present, were less focused on their TV services and more focused on broadband.
The 2014 CES show was a testament to how convergence was occurring in the technology field. The smart phone had combined the functionality of the point and shoot camera, the GPS, the ipod/mp3 player, the digital assistance into one device. The number of android phone varieties at the show was impressive. Additionally there were so many accessory providers showcasing their cables, screen protectors and phone cases. The 2014 show was significantly larger than the 2005 show with so many more vendors and especially Chinese companies.
The 2020 show that I just returned from was staggering in size. The show spanned the entire Las Vegas Convention Center, the Sands convention center and the Aria convention center. There were an estimated 170,000 attendees from 160 countries. The show was just massive. Consumer tech while still on display had morphed into B2B tech, componentry and future focused solutions. Autonomous vehicles, iOT sensors, electric vehicles, charging stations, commercial drones and AR/VR were very pervasive. Companies like my former employer Doosan, a Korean conglomerate that makes construction equipment had a very large booth and outside signage for their first CES show. Their presence signified the shift that I saw in the focus of the show.
While the first CES I attended coincided with the Adult Entertainment Expo, the 2020 CES show was the first show that allowed sex toy manufacturers to display their goods in the health and fitness hall. There were several “personal sexual health” providers showing off their buzzy toys. This was somewhat controversial in past years, but 2020 marked the first time they were allowed at the show.
Brian and MKBHD
Brian and Gary Vee
The number of YouTubers armed with their high end cameras, tripods and professional level audio equipment was impressive. Mainstream media reviews have been replaced by a cast of internet famous reviewers such as Marques Brownlee (MKBHD). It was interesting to see the amount of user generated content flowing from CES each day and onto Twitter and YouTube.
The sessions that I attended included one on Data Driven Marketing moderated by Nick Thompson from Wired magazine that included Lockie Andrews from UNTUCKIT and Paul Cheesbrough from FOX. I also got to listen to and meet Gary Vanyerchuk who spoke about how to cut through the noisy marketing space and to define your brand. He referred to data driven marketing as the equivalent of oxygen, it is something all marketers need to leverage, but they don’t need to specifically call it out.
Going to CES over three decades has taught me a few things about how technology will continue to evolve and influence the world of work and play.
1) Technology is driving the global economy- It used to be that tech was for geeks and nerds. No tech CEOs are like rock stars. They are disrupting and revolutionizing industries. Being tech savvy has become a requirement for just about any job. We are so tied to technology in everything we do and that trend will not end anytime soon. For baby boomers and gen-xers who did not grow up tech savvy, this poses and challenge. A 2 year old can operate an ipad like a wiz, so future generations are much more accustomed to tech.
2) Tech innovation is changing the way we work, play and interact- Autonomous vehicles, iOT, smartphones, smart homes, sex tech, video conferencing, drones, virtual reality, medtech, and so many other innovations are revolutionizing human interaction. Some for the better and some for the worse. Interactions are becoming more impersonal and we are more and more dependent upon our technology to get just about anything done.
3) Tech must solve a problem- In order for a new technology to survive and then thrive, it must solve a problem worth solving. There have been lots of cool technologies on display at the three decades of CES that I attended that will never make it. The reason those technologies will not be adopted is that there is not a clear problem that they solve. Tech entrepreneurs must be clear on the problem they are solving for and the audience for whom this solution will be relevant.
I have enjoyed each of the CES shows I have attended. I always return home energized and intrigued by what I saw. Seeing which of the products featured at CES make it into the real world is always interesting. I look forward to attending the show again in a few years. In the meantime, I will focus on helping organizations to create clarity around their competitive advantages and who they seek to serve.