CES 2022

Was it really a CES? Was it really a Consumer Electronics Show? It sure didn’t feel like it.

I’ve waited a month to write this. For one, I didn’t know what to write! Try as I might to find that one thing that was a breakthrough, and, well, I couldn’t find it. I took some time to read what others covered. I didn’t find much. While technology moved forward, it was barely noticeable.

This is about the CES that wasn’t.

For starters, there was about 22% of the normal CES attendance. One in four of the usual attended. It was so low, and I’m guessing far fewer were there more than two days, that CES sent out a message telling people to check if the booth they wanted to see was open. That 22% may have been true on the first day, but by the last, the place looked like a rural airport with a local Chamber of Commerce display.

I’ve been attending CES continuously since 2003 except for last year’s virtual show, a show that was also horrible. I believed that with a one year gap, I’d see some true breakthrough technologies or spot some early trend. Nope. Nothing like that happed.

It was especially difficult to judge scale because of the new West convention center. It was far more difficult to see how small the show was when compared to 2020. South Hall was closed entirely. No two floors this time. So many big companies pulled out at the last minute leaving large open areas making the show feel weird. All of this panic over a virus that now has the fatality rate no different from the everyday flu. Which hit me the day of my return. I tested for COVID twice and both tests were negative. It was the flu, and an average flu at best.

Everywhere you went, you had to be masked up. It didn’t matter where you were. inside our out. That masking up did me a lot of good. I’m glad the mask hysteria is finally coming to a deserved end. It’s maddening to think so many people went along without ever questioning the effectiveness, just because someone said so. By now we’d have hard data if masking up did anything. They don’t, and they never did. That should be painfully obvious to everyone by now.

To me CES was one colossal flop of a show and if I knew that same show was going on, I’d have skipped it entirely. I felt a bit misled and I was disappointed. I was miffed at the CTA for over-hyping the show.

You’ve seen this before. Now Hyundai is making it about them at over $75k each.

It was impossible to judge the great technology horse race. The most notable thing at the show was Hyundai taking credit for Boston Dynamics work and pushing the Hyundai name over the company they acquired and the technology in it. In fact, the company kept moving Hyundai Korean executives in front of demonstration spectators adding a tinge of arrogance to the whole display. It’s what I remember more than the demonstration. Hyundai looked bad. There is no way to sugar coat it. They always seem to be off point at CES no matter what they do. I’ve covered that before.

I wish I could say who’s in the lead on the voice assistant front, but based on the light attendance, it is still Alexa, and for a simple reason. You don’t have to add “Hey” in front of a command word. How simple is that to understand? What’s easier to use? Alexa!

This oughta draw them in…

LG had a plywood display with QR codes. I flew to Las Vegas for that?

Meanwhile, Samsung did a decent job of demonstrating some sense of sanity by showing a full display while reducing the flow of people. Even then, it took a day to get after numerous delays. Still, there was nothing at Samsung that blew me away. 8K still looks about the same as it did two years ago.

The Odyssey Ark 55” monitor swung in portrait use.

What was cool, mostly because I want one, was the Odyssey Ark 55” curved monitor that could be turned 90 degrees. It was a combination of the size and steep curve that made it cool. All in 4K. It will be out this spring and probably for a lot of money.

Even Sony looked like they were attending with one foot. Probably the coolest thing at the show and something they were doing was launching small satellites with cameras where anyone could secure time to use.

Sony concept satellite to share time with any users.

We walked the floor every day and spent time at Eureka Park, yet we didn’t see anything that stopped us cold, other than the hard sell from the massage chair folks. They were really working the show like never before.

What Was Not There

In 2020, the Vdara was still using robots by Savioke to deliver meals, snacks, and items from the store directly to rooms. They first started using the delivery robots in 2018. Those robots were gone, so I asked the cafe manager what happened? She said the contract ended and that it wasn’t all that useful.

Sometimes technology gets ahead of the real usefulness. I’d love to know if it was a lack of use, expense, what? I decided to look up the company and see how they were doing on LinkedIn. It showed no growth in employees. Some technologies are just too soon or not convenient enough. It could also be that the numbers don’t make sense.

Automotive and Transportation

What was strong at CES 2022 was automotive. It seems like everyone is in the EV business and yet nothing stuck me as all that inventive, and thinking about a solution that is well past Tesla who owns the category. To compete, you have to offer something substantially better, and I didn’t see it. I didn’t know what to think of Fisker.

The Fisker Ocean

Fisker may find a market for its EV, the Ocean with young buyers, but for me, it didn’t hit the mark and as I thought about it, I couldn’t pinpoint why. I look forward to seeing how it’s accepted by consumers.

I also think it’s difficult for anyone to launch a model aimed at the practical when they can be the very group who’s sometimes slow to adopt a new brand. I could write about this topic for hours, but if Subaru came out with a competing EV, who’d win? This isn’t about Fisker, it’s about who adopts new automotive brands in that utility price point? Anyone so far?

I have a lot of confidence in Rebecca Lindland who’s there, but hopefully they are following her guidance. She pays close attention to this stuff.

If you’ve read my writings over the years, I don’t place bets on husband and wife companies such as Fisker. I think they always suffer. I’ve written about this since 2015 and so I have some doubts about their ability to build the right organization to go the distance, but that’s just me.

I find EVs in general to be a bit of the noise, sort of like passenger drones. Does any company have an order in to purchase passenger drones for commercial use? According to Business and Commercial Aviation, there is yet to be a single business case. The helicopter should already prove that.

I’m becoming more convinced that we’re still decades away from fully autonomous vehicles. I’m forming this opinion because of what I don’t see. The progression of autonomous robots follows this pattern, Roomba, internal delivery robot, external slow delivery robot, closed campus slow transport, open transport, slow confined area, then city streets, then freeways. We’re still at the Roomba stage.

Oh, who won the TV race this year? Samsung! They at least showed up with TVs!

I’ll still go back to CES next year. It will mark 20 years for me. I love it when it’s happening and I always learn something. What I learned this year was the COVID did a lot more than damage and kill people. It set back two years of technological advancement and if a company did their work and didn’t let COVID slow them down, they gained a significant advantage in the technological horse race. That’s what I learned from the non-show.