From Sony’s robot dog Aibo to 30-minute VR workout experiences, there were a lot of exciting and slightly impractical products for us to get our heads round this year.
My favourite was The Wall, Samsung’s new MicroLED TV. 146-inches diagonally, the TV engulfs a viewer’s entire field of vision. While currently the tech is sure to be much too expensive for the average consumer, there is real potential to change how we watch television in the future. MicroLEDs are much smaller than regular LEDS, emitting their own light and eliminating the need for backlight or colour filters. Samsung also claims that their tech is extremely durable and much more power efficient.Another great innovation was from Vivo, a smartphone manufacturer popular in China. They have become the first to include an in-screen fingerprint reader in partnership with Synaptics. Bezels, the borders between a screen and a phone's frame, have traditionally always taken up a significant proportion of users’ front screens, with each generation getting increasingly slimmer. The new tech from Synaptics will mean that manufacturers no longer have to include large bezels on the front of devices for their buttons. In-screen fingerprinting is a feature which users have been eagerly anticipating for a while, so there’s a chance it may make the iPhone X’s Face ID obsolete.Last year Snapchat made a big impact by dropping off their Spectacles Bot on Las Vegas Boulevard handing out free pairs. However, since then Snap, has reportedly lost over $40 million in unsold Spectacles. Despite not being a profitable venture, it has led the Big Four (Google, Facebook, Apple & Amazon) opening up their respective AR platforms to developers in an effort to encourage creation. Whilst not all tech at CES necessarily takes off as planned, their innovation does provides us with an indication of what to expect in the coming years.I’m looking forward to seeing how the latest technology from CES 2018 will have an impact on consumer behaviour in the future. Will larger TV screens and access to a never-ending content at the touch of a button result in the death of the cinema experience? How about the gym, surely if you can get a 30-minute VR sessions there’s no need to drive to your local PureGym anymore? There are endless opportunities for success and failure, so we’ll just have to sit back and wait to see what sticks.Pam Odumusi, Account Executive
