I did not attend this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which is the first time I’ve missed it in a while. The CES folks actually sent me a note a few weeks ago asking what was wrong and why I’d not yet registered; this was followed by a detailed survey, which I did in fact complete. So apparently I wasn’t the only one to skip the show this year; I hear anecdotally that attendance was down. I like CES a lot; it’s a great event whether you’re an analyst or a gadget freak, or both in my case. The primary reason for not attending was a scheduling conflict; clients and their needs always come first. But I have to confess I didn’t miss the crowds, exhaustion, hassle, and the absurdly high prices the local establishments charge during large events. Las Vegas is now run by computers that optimize revenue moment-to-moment in every conceivable way. I don’t blame the locals for squeezing every list dime out of attendees that they can; that’s capitalism, supply and demand, and all that. But I don’t miss playing that game, either.
And, as it turns out, there wasn’t really a lot of wireless news out of CES, other than the obvious, which is that wireless is everywhere and is now a pervasive force in consumer electronics. We’ve got wireless video links, wireless game controllers, wireless media players, and on and on. My interest, of course, is in wireless communications, and something very interesting is afoot here. Most analysts see a fundamental dichotomy between “business” devices and “consumer” devices, usually called “feature phones” (the plain old cell phone is apparently dead) and “smart phones”, respectively. Business devices are assumed to have push e-mail and appear most often in the PDA-with-micro-keyboard form factor, and consumer devices are, well, everything else in every conceivable form factor. Industrial design and the coolness factor are significant elements in purely consumer devices; some of them are so intricate as to raise concerns in my mind about ruggedness and reliability, which are critical with business devices.
Consumer devices also feature media players and cameras, although this capability to some degree is usually present in business devices as well. And, perhaps surprisingly, well it should be. Neither audio nor video has seen great use in business settings and I’ve had a few IT managers mention to me that they really don’t think a camera or an MP3/MP4 player is necessary on the devices the give to their salespeople. But I think these features are going to become much more important in business applications over time, once the I’m-not-paying-you-to-be-entertained guys see the light.
Cameras in cell phones are improving – check out the Motorola Z10 announced at CES for an example. This handset has a 3.2 megapixel camera. I think both still and short-video photography will become useful in competitive and other information gathering, once business types get familiar with the use of these features. This, by the way, is not easy. I find that most cell-phone cameras take fairly poor pictures, and most people need at least some basic training in lighting and framing scenes. Audio and video playback will also see greater application in business over time, I think, because (a) the information richness of these media is much greater than words alone, and (b) everyone likes to listen to audio and watch video. OK, a pep talk from the CEO probably won’t have the same impact or at least the artistic appeal of a music video, but companies that learn to make use of rich media will ultimately have a meaningful competitive advantage. Remember, wireless is all about gaining said advantage by getting information, in the most appropriate form, into the hands of those who can use it, ahead of the competition.
None of this implies that there will be any less diversity in the array of handsets on the market. There won’t. But media-focused handsets are no longer the exclusive province of the high-school and college set, and you should expect more marketing of media-centric devices in business applications this year.
