The Road to Discovery

A look at the underlying trends at CES 2019 and how they will translate into the next technology epoch

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is the tech industry’s curtain raiser for the year and typically sets the tone for the months ahead. More than 180,000 people cram into an array of exhibitions in the hope of seeing the latest and greatest tech and gadgetry. Each year, CES inadvertently takes on a particular theme based on recent tech innovation, like voice assistants, or on industry disruptors, like electric vehicles. At this year’s CES, we saw the full spectrum — from flying cars to connected everything to robots that can do any task. Yet this year, very few of the products I saw were ready for mass market adoption. No one single item or gadget stole the show.

CES 2019 is a kind of year that sort of screams, “We’re ready for the products that really work.” — Steven Sinofsky

Don’t get me wrong — the fantastic new products continue to proliferate, but they all have one common trait: They operate in their own bubble with minimal interaction with the society they are a part of. Take home automation, for example. We have lots of “smart” products: locks, bulbs, sockets, cameras, thermostats, fridges and TVs, to name a few. But no one company has designed a ubiquitous solution for this new platform that simply and easily integrates all individually operating devices as an intelligent system. This lack of a complete solution applies to other areas, as well. In fact, everyone at the conference was still trying to determine what the new platform will be and on what hardware it will be built. The contributing technologies that will enable the next big thing are here today and were pervasive at CES.

The main innovations that linked the multitude of booths, which will enable the next platform, are summarized below.

5G

The next phase of mobile phone communications will allow more bandwidth and throughput for edge computing. The faster speeds, ultralow latency, and high-density connections will enable many new use cases, especially for interconnected devices. In 2019, every major carrier will have 5G pilot programs up and running.

Quantum computing

Potentially the next (or at least another) computing paradigm leverages the quantum properties of particles to tackle problems that are currently seen as too complex and exponential in nature for classic systems to handle. IBM recently introduced its first commercial product, and many startups are working on the problem.

Touchscreen tech

A variety of screen tech — from folding phones, roll-up TVs, screens that can bend around walls, paper-thin displays and more — are at various stages of viability. Durable, cost-effective and easy-to-integrate screens mean more opportunities to interact with them on a daily basis.

Voice interfaces

We’ve now reached mass adoption of voice, with abundant voice assistants integrated into our mobile phones as well as a wide variety of electronics, appliances and other devices. Voice will become a ubiquitous way of interacting with technology going forward.

What does this mean for the future?

Just like the internet in the 1990s and the personal computer in the 2000s, the mobile revolution of the 2010s is reaching a plateau. So, what comes next? We’re starting to see glimpses of what the next technological accelerant could be. Personally, I think the next technology epoch will happen sooner than most people think.

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” — Bill Gates

Car as a platform

This is like the Wild West right now. Once vehicles are autonomous, what will humans do with the freedom, and who will own the interaction? I’d wager that the current automotive OEMs are not going to be the leaders in this emerging platform industry; it’s too big a transition from bending metal to advanced software and AI expertise. So, who will stay in their lanes and who will invent the future? We are still in the early innings of what autonomous vehicles will ultimately become, so understanding the platform they establish is even harder to predict. The increase in venture investment and focus on the problem by large tech companies, however, is a leading indicator of how attractive this market could be. Companies are willing to deploy the hardware and advance the autonomous industry just to be in the forefront of access to the platform. We hope this doesn’t go the same way as home automation, with disparate and poorly connected ecosystems.

Home as a platform

When you walk from your car and into your home, will the platform change or follow you inside? You’ll be connected to everything inside those walls, including the actual walls and the door you walked through. For simplicity and privacy, consumers will demand that a single company manage the data their houses collect. Apple, Amazon, and Google are all working to become the victor. Something highly visible at CES was the “Alexa/Google Assistant powered” label at the top of feature sets for other products. Yet, no single provider has conquered the ecosystem through software alone, nor do we anticipate that they want to build the next smart toaster, leaving this power fully in the hands of hardware developers who will decide how they want to share the data and with whom.

Body as a platform

Just as the number sensors around you increases, so does the number of sensors on you (and maybe in you) — glasses, shoes, rings, belts, shirts and of course watches. No longer are these products glorified step trackers; to optimize human performance, they are universally having an impact on such daily behaviors as food consumption, mindfulness, and sleep patterns.

For the first time, healthcare is directly in the hands of consumers, forcing the healthcare industry to take a proactive rather than reactive approach to diagnosis. The cost of genetic sequencing is quickly reaching mass market adoption and will allow us to run diagnostic tests on ourselves the way we do for a laptop or automobile today.

Once these platforms are established, the question arises: How is data secured and shared among them, and how will they talk to one another? The company that can answer this wins the prize of controlling the next digital platform and will most likely become the largest company the world has ever seen. Sure, today Google knows my location and search history, but this next company will know my inner self: food preferences, daily schedule, health profile and more. With the continued advancements in AI and machine learning, I anticipate that these platforms will proactively act on my behalf and know me better than I know myself.

Back at CES

Out there on the show floor, sitting among the talking toilets and step counters, exists a company with the ability to access more data, provide more utility and retain more value than anything we’ve seen to date. At SVB, we know that this ecosystem will be massive. It will take hundreds if not thousands of startups, corporates and investors to align on a unified future. We are looking forward to getting to know them and participating in the journey toward the next tech era.