CES 2011. Whew!

Just got back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas; total sensory overload. Of course all the big guys were there in a very big way. Samsung's “booth” looked as big as a football field. They had everything there that they make from cellphones to refrigerators and everything connected to the internet.

It was all 3D all the time. The 3D presence was even bigger than last year and it wasn’t limited to TVs. Mobile devices including laptops and cellphones were shown with 3D capability. Sharp showed a smartphone with a 3D display. Didn’t need glasses. Several vendors were showing the next innovation in 3D TVs. Sony showed a 3D TV that didn’t require any glasses. It was OK but not really ready for prime time. You have to be at a specific distance from the screen and pretty much directly in front of it. But you can see that the R&D folks are working hard to eliminate the requirement to wear glasses. One step before that though, LG showed a TV that uses passive technology which means you can use the cheap type of glasses they use in theaters. It was very good. They were touting the medical hazards of wearing active shutter glasses too much and passive glasses were much better for everyone.

Once again, Lady Gaga made an appearance at the Polaroid booth, albeit 40 minutes late. It seems that Polaroid and Gaga “collaborated” to create the Gray Label line of products which includes an instant mobile printer, an instant digital camera and some extremely ugly and bulky camera glasses.  I guess Polaroid is going back to its roots of instant whatever.

 ATT said that they were moving aggressively into the 4G LTE space. They plan to launch 20 4G devices this year and have their 4G network fully deployed by 2013. Everyone was showing their 4G LTE devices by the hundreds most on Android OS.

And, here comes the tablets. Motorola showed their long awaited Xoom, Android 3.0-based device. It will be sold through Verizon. It a pretty neat tablet. Initially it will use the 3G network but will be upgraded to LTE sometime this year.  It has a front facing camera for video chats and supports 1080p HD video. It also has an HDMI port so that you can display your content on your big TV at home.

Everyone is getting into the tablet act to try and thwart the iPad juggernaut. Samsung, RIM, LG, along with Motorola were just a few of the many screaming at the top of their lungs about their offerings. There are variations in screen sizes ranging from a 4 inch model from Panasonic to a 10 inch model from most other vendors.  And kind of like smartphones, if you stand back about 15 feet, they are all beginning to look the same. The differentiation eventually will be in software and apps. One odd observation: Apple defined what a tablet is with the introduction of the iPad. A couple of companies apparently didn’t get the message. They were calling, what looked to me like a netbook, a tablet. It was the traditional clamshell device with a keyboard on one half and the screen on the other. I guess they saw the writing on the wall that tablets will kill the netbook market and just wanted to see if this strategy will keep them alive.

With CES put to bed and all the hullabaloo around tablets, 4G phones, and Android done, I’m wondering what’s left to announce at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in about five weeks. Should be interesting.