CES 2019 Preview

Six key areas we are keeping a close eye on at the tech event of the year

The 2019 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will commence next Tuesday (Jan. 8th) and as always, the Lab team has already been gearing up to show our friends the best of the best from this annual showcase of global innovations. This year, an estimated 180,000 people and over 4,500 exhibitors are expected to descend on Las Vegas to help set the agenda for artificial intelligence, 5G networks, virtual reality/augmented reality, self-driving cars, digital health, and many other innovations in 2019.

5G Talk Gets Real

People have been talking about 5G at CES for years as they keenly hypothesize the various opportunities and industry disruptions that the next-gen wireless standard could bring. Now that 5G networks are officially starting to roll out in the U.S., suddenly the industry is left to grapple with some very tangible and under-considered implications in terms of the commercial viability and practical use cases for the initial stage of the 5G rollout.

As of now, different wireless carriers seem to be pursuing different positions for their first-to-market 5G products. Verizon chose to position its first consumer 5G service, available in only four cities, as a home broadband replacement to mixed response. AT&T recently started selling 5G mobile hotspots to early adopters in 12 cities via a clunky Netgear device that funnels high-speed wireless broadband connections to nearby phones over WiFi.

Sprint has indicated it will launch a 5G service first for smartphones in nine US cities this year. Its prospective merger partner, T-Mobile, has set the timeline for a nationwide 5G launch in 2020, but also says it is installing gear in 30 cities that would be ready when 5G smartphones appeared in 2019. While it may look like these two carriers have fallen behind in comparison, the race towards 5G has only just started. The reality is that in 2019, 5G is still in an early install phase with few compatible mobile handsets (Apple reportedly won’t release a 5G phone until at least 2020), so don’t expect to see any real implications hitting the market just yet.

Nevertheless, such reality is unlikely to prevent 5G from becoming a hot topic among CES attendees this year. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg and AT&T CEO John Donovan are both featured keynote speakers this year, and both are expected share more on their 5G rollout plans. Outside the keynotes, panelists will be surely commenting on the recent global section against Huawei and their 5G network equipments. Overall. the prospect of a super-fast, low-latency wireless network holds endless possibilities that it could unlock in various fields such as cloud computing, connected devices, autonomous cars, and smart city infrastructure, making it an ideal topic for an event like CES.

That being said, the harsh reality facing carriers as they start to roll out 5G services will hopefully help ground this year’s discussion around 5G. It is important for the industry to center the discourse around finding the right product-market fit for 5G products, as well as figuring out the right messaging to educate mass consumers and get them excited about this impending mobile speed boost without overselling it.

Foldable Phones to Face Public Assessment

Beyond 5G-ready smartphones, major phone manufacturers are expected to showcase the latest innovation in smartphone form factor as they look to find new value drivers in a mature product category. The foldable phones will have a real chance to wow the crowd at this year’s CES and build buzz, but they will also have to stand public scrutiny and make a strong case for a product-market fit if they were to usher in a new mobile era.

In November, Samsung showcased a working prototype of its foldable phone during its yearly developer conference, which sports a new Infinity Flex screen, as well as a One UI interface that Samsung created exclusively for this bendable handset. Latest reports suggest Samsung will bring the codenamed Galaxy Fold to various European markets this year to test out the new form factor. Meanwhile, Royole, which launched the 7.8-inch FlexPai at an invitation-only event in China, is also expected to host a booth at the trade show for more publicity. LG was also reportedly planning to unveil a foldable phone during its keynote address, although more recent updates cast some doubts over that possibility. There is also a leaked video of a foldable phone made by Xiaomi going around, although the authenticity has yet to be confirmed.

At the end of the day, flexible and foldable screens are nothing new at CES — LG has been showcasing its prototypes of rollable TV and OLED displays for a couple of years now. Pre-show rumors even suggest that this is the year that LG will finally turn this rollable OLED TV into an actual product. But regardless of whether it is bendable phones or rollable TVs, flexible screen technology will only prove useful when it has the right software and real-life use cases to support their high price-tags. Until then, this form factor will remain closer to being a cool gimmick rather than a real smartphone innovation.

The Smart Home War Heats Up

Both Google and Amazon are set to stage a sizable presence at CES this year, with their respective voice assistant at the center of their showcases. The battle for the home platform kicked off in earnest last year, and things will only intensify this year as the two leading companies double down on their smart home push.

Amazon is set to show off its “Alexa Everywhere” vision for its voice assistant in and out of the home. The ecommerce giant will have a presence in all three expo venues, and Alexa will no doubt be prominently featured by other connected device makers, including Bose, Lenovo, and Sony, in their booths as well. Amazon unleashed a slew of new Alexa-powered devices in September, and now it will need to find a clear way to communicate their worth in the smart home ecosystem.

Not to be outdone, Google will be tripling its floor space from last year to proper showcase, among other far-reaching projects and services, Google Assistant-powered products. The company may introduce more partnerships with third-party manufacturers as well as smart-home features from its Nest team to help keep pace with Amazon.

Samsung may also announce Google Assistant integration in its 2019 television model lineup next week, which points to a larger trend of TV makers making a bid to turn the biggest screen in most households into the control hub for smart home, usually by integrating with a voice assistant (or multiple ones). It is interesting to note that Samsung has its own Bixby voice assistant, so this new Google Assistant integration may signal a strategic shift. Looking at the big picture, this is a trend that dovetails with the rise of smart displays, as Amazon and Google recently updated their “smart speaker with a screen” products. As with last year, it’d be interesting to see whether Roku will finally make a play to expand its positioning within the smart home ecosystem beyond simple integration with Google Assistant.

Elsewhere, smart home security appliances makers like August and Ring (now owned by Amazon) will both be unveiling new products at CES. Samsung is reportedly working on a smaller, cheaper Galaxy Home smart speaker, even though the original Bixby-powered Galaxy Home, unveiled last summer, still hasn’t hit retail yet. As the battle for conquering the smart home space continues to heat up, we expect to see device makers showcase their connected home products at CES next week.

Automation Across the Board

Thanks to the rapid advances in AI and machine learning researches, automation is a major trend happening across various industry verticals. This year, this charge towards AI smarts is particularly pronounced in auto, robotics, and retail technology. Given time, automation will come to redefine the customer experience in transportation, hospitality, restaurants, retail, and more.

We expect to see a lot of new cars that take advantage of the AI smarts to achieve new levels of in-car connectivity and autonomy, while robots for automating last-mile delivery, hospitality services, and other manual labor becomes smarter and more helpful. While neither self-driving cars nor cute robots are new to CES, this year they may finally get to the tipping point where they graduate from “show pony” status to become market-ready products. Although a lot of regulatory hurdles need to be cleared for them to become viable for mass adoption, we are excited to see what the industry leaders in auto and robotics have to show at CES this year.

Besides redefining the driving experience, the deployment of autonomous cars will also free up valuable eyeballs for media owners. Already, Audi has announced a collaboration with Disney to develop a “new type of media” to take advantage of that to-be-reclaimed media time, which the two companies plan to share more details about in Vegas next week.

This trend of automation is also manifesting in the retail space as the cashierless store concept gain traction. New research suggests that Amazon Go stores could be a $4 billion business by 2021. The growing expansion of Amazon Go stores in 2018 has prompted all major brick-and-mortar retailers to explore cashierless retail tech and other ways to automate their retail operations. Can the retail tech startups offer cashierless solutions that enable a shopping experience that rivals that of Amazon Go? Hopefully, this CES will offer retailers a better understanding.

AR Takes the Mantle from VR

Augmented reality had a momentous year in 2018, especially in terms of mobile AR, and the AR industry will no doubt be taking the spotlight from virtual reality, which has been dominating part of the CES show floor for a few years up until last year. This year, we expect AR companies like Vuzi and LetinAR to take show floors from VR firms as they aim to demonstrate AR’s usefulness beyond mobile with heads-up-displays (HUDs), enterprise smart glasses, and AR-guided healthcare systems.

AR might not be our everyday reality yet, but this coming year marks an important year for the industry to figure out some real-life use cases that can contextualize our surroundings and bridge the digital-physical divide. To avoid the same “hype-and-bust” fate of VR, however, it is important that the AR creators ground themselves in practical functions that foster user behaviors and daily habits.

As for VR, while mass adoption as a media channel will likely remain a distant possibility for the time being, major players like HTC and Oculus will no doubt be present to promote their latest headsets, which are still great tools for immersive arcade gaming, on-site brand activations, as well as virtual training and educational programs. The scuttlebutt has it that an update to Oculus’ Rift PC VR headset is coming out soon, so we’ll keep an eye out for CES for that.

Wearables Hone in on Digital Health

The latest Apple Watch set a great example for wearable makers to explore additional healthcare use cases. At this CES, we expect to see some interesting digital health-oriented features and use cases coming out of the wearable startups that will shape the way consumers think about healthcare.

The health tech section showed solid growth and diversification at last year’s CES. Wearable manufacturers showcased a slew of niche healthcare and fitness products that use proprietary software to help users make sense of the biometric data collected and offer concrete feedback and suggestions. This year, we expect to see more wearable products to hone in on hyper specialized healthcare use cases (such as the world’s first wearable device for incontinence), while the usual suspects of fitness wearable players like Garmin, Fossil, and Fitbit to launch some new products geared towards the lower-end of the market and perhaps branch out into some rudimentary healthcare functions.

Amazon made strong headway into the healthcare space in 2018, starting a joint venture with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan to improve employee healthcare benefits and acquiring online pharmacy startup PillPack in June. We expect the digital health space to follow roughly the same path as the smart home, with major platform players swooping in to bring it mainstream, and it will be interesting to see if any of them make a move soon.

Besides observing these major developing trends in the consumer tech space on the ever-expanding CES show floor, we also look forward to hearing industry leaders from prominent global tech firms on those key issues and challenges. This year, keynote speakers include LG Electronics President I.P. Park, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg, AMD CEO Lisa Su, AT&T CEO John Donovan, and MediaLink CEO Michael Kassan.

Check back here next week for our on-the-ground trend reports and hot takes from Las Vegas throughout the week. You can also sign up for our newsletter here to get daily updates right in your inbox.