CES 2018: Day 1 Recap

CES officially opens its show floors, plus keynote highlights from Ford and Huawei

Today is the day! CES 2018 has officially opened its door to nearly 170,000 attendees from all over the world. Despite it being a rare rainy day here in Las Vegas, everyone has been in full-on CES mode, all eager to see the latest in consumer tech and be wowed. (Google did have to shut down its outdoor CES booth due to leakage though.) The Lab team gave several rounds of highly customized group tours for our clients, as well as attending the two big keynotes of the day.

At the top of the morning, Ford kicked things off with a strong keynote that detailed the automaker’s ambition in catching up in developing autonomous cars and building out an open cloud mobility platform for all self-driving cars of the future. You can read the full recap of Ford’s keynote here.

Huawei’s Disappointing Keynote is Basically a Product Launch Event

In comparison, the afternoon keynote session from Huawei, China’s biggest smartphone maker and the world’s third largest smartphone seller after Apple and Samsung, failed to live up to its hype. The CES keynote program notes that CEO Richard Yu will share some thoughts on what Huawei is doing with 5G and AI to transform the mobile devices and IoT devices. Instead, what we got was a rather disappointing keynote that spent way too much time listing the hardware specs of the Mate Pro 10 flagship phone that Huawei is launching in the North American markets next month while barely paying lip service to 5G and AI. The keynote featured few noteworthy new features, and Yu seemed a bit rattled throughout the hour.

Huawei’s main selling points for Mate 10 Pro lean heavy on hardware design and specs

To be fair, Yu did not have the easiest time going into this keynote. News broke yesterday afternoon that AT&T has backed out a deal to sell Huawei smartphones in the U.S. at the last minute over security concerns, leaving Huawei with very limited options for U.S. carrier support. (Huawei phones are incompatible with the legacy CDMA system that Verizon and Sprint still use for voice calls.) Yu defiantly addressed the total absence of carrier retail support near the end of the keynote, calling a big loss for Huawei but even a bigger loss for U.S. consumers as they miss out on what Huawei firmly believed to be ”the best choice in the market.”

With U.S. carrier support, Huawei resorts to sell Mate 10 unlocked via ecommerce channels

What Huawei seems to be forgetting is that selling smartphone in developed markets has long moved past the point of touting better hardware specs as the main selling points. It’s now all about how your software and services can differentiate your products. Unfortunately for Huawei, there was little talk about that beyond a rudimentary object-recognizing AI for optimizing photography on the Mate Pro 10, as well as a standard Google Assistant integration that localizes voice command for American users. Given that around 90% of U.S. smartphones are sold through carrier channels, Huawei really needs to get a carrier (T-Mobile, most likely) on board soon if it still wants to have a shot at cracking the U.S. market.

Day 1 News Round-Up

• Kodak surprised the crowd with the launch KODAKcoin, a “photocentric cryptocurrency” for image rights management as part of a blockchain-based initiative from Kodak to help photographers control their image rights. The company’s stock share soared nearly 120% after the announcement, proving once again that cryptocurrency and blockchain are the hottest investment buzzword du jour. Only time will tell if Kodak is serious about exploring blockchain to expand its business interests or simply using it as a marketing stunt.
• Smart lock maker August launched an in-home delivery service that allows you to let the delivery man into your home. But if so far Amazon still has a lot to do in order to earn the consumer trust to make Amazon Key work, chances are August probably won’t be able to get it right from the get-go either. The interesting thing here, however, is that August first tested this service with Walmart, and is now opening it up to all retailers to use this service to further boost their last-mile delivery, which effectively positioned itself as an OEM solution for in-home delivery services and neatly plays into the Amazon vs. everyone else narrative that many retailers are rallying around.
• Samsung unveiled Flip, a 55" digital whiteboard with screen-sharing. If you thought “Google Jamboard” while you read that, then you’d know this one won’t come cheap either (it will begin at $2,700). Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see how everyday office objects becomes digitized and slowly altering the way we work.
• Chinese smartphone brand Vivo showcased the world’s first ready-to-produce in-display fingerprint scanning technology. Perhaps now Apple can add Touch ID back into iPhone X’s full-size front screen before long?
• Anker announces Roav Viva, a USB car charger with Alexa enabled via Bluetooth for just $50, further helping Amazon realize its vision of “Alexa Everywhere.”
• Toyota is also jumping on the Alexa train, as the Japanese car maker announced its plan to integrate Amazon’s voice assistant into its cars later this year, which, again, expands Alexa’s footprint in vehicles.
• High-end speaker maker Bang & Olufsen announced it will add Google Assistant to its connected speakers this year. The Danish audio company already allows voice control through Google Home, but a built-in integration is now on their to-do list. There are numerous example of connected devices — mostly speakers and TVs, but also other smart home devices such as a connected shower head by Moen or a smart light switch by iDevice — choosing to integrate with either Alexa or Google Assistant or both at this CES. It is safe to say that the Alexa vs. Google Assistant battle for becoming the voice platform for IoT devices is now officially on.

Tomorrow we expect to attend a multi-speaker keynote on the power of 5G connectivity as well as another on the TV industry in transition featuring executives from Hulu and Turner. In addition, Variety will host a Entertainment Summit tomorrow to talk about the future of media content. As always, please remember to check back here and follow us on Twitter and Instagram for more on-the-ground actions.