CES 2017: TOP 7 TECH TRENDS TO LOOK FORWARD TO

Everyone, well, everyone in the tech industry, is usually looking forward to cool events such as CES and this year, we have no reason to think there would be an exception. The world of technology is a fast evolving one, and we are happy to get new pieces of tech spring up every day. At events like CES, we get to have a compact version of all those released advancements, and we even usher in the new one. The CES event for the year 2017 is just some few hours away, and from past news, we believe we have a pretty good hand on what to expect on showcase. With OEMs and ODMs having worked themselves all year to hold an impressive booth at the event, below are the top seven things that we believe would catch our fancy at the event.

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1 THE SMART HOME, FROM ALEXA.

Amazon had long had the foresight for a smart home, and at the CES 2017, we would get to see this early lead do the magic for them. Not that they haven’t had competition in recent years, but their competition has always been hindered by one thing or the other. Nest was the first to go down the drain; the Google Home came, but it was too late. With the kind of tech developed over at Apple, one would have picked them to be the strongest contender, but their HomeKit has not been getting as much attention as it should.

Boiling down the news, this means that Alexa would own the center stage in the smart home products, a catalog that contains, but is not limited to, loudspeakers, sprinkler systems, bulbs, lamps et al.

2 AI, AT ITS BEST

At CES, every year there is always a buzzword that everyone likes to include in their sales pitch. Once upon a time, they were making use of ‘4K.’ after that, the next year led to the birth of the word “smart” behind the name of every material. Then, words like ‘4G’ and ‘satellite video’ started to make the waves. This season, we think that Artificial Intelligence has stolen the center stage. At CES, you would find out that AI is not just the property of big bodies like Facebook and Google, but is inculcated in some wearables, sensors, cars and all.

3 SOMETHING BETTER THAN DRIVERLESS CARS

Uber, Tesla, Google and Waymo, and the likes have been in the news a lot of times this year, and most of then, it has been because of their driverless car technology. While everyone wants to be in the forefront of this research, and it would not doubt be a central attraction at CES, there is another concept (no pun intended) that would make the waves.

Turning to the interior of vehicles, concept cars are on the rise, and they have been imagined for the future of driverless cars. These will have some driver-centric add-ons and upgrades such as a windshield system with heads-up displays (HUDs)

4 SECURITY: NEED, NOT WANT

The past few months before the turn of the new year has been a lot of security concern for a lot of people. Yahoo declared nearly 1 billion accounts hacked and information shipped off to them. In like news, the emails of former US presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, was hacked, and she had a lot of her personal emails leaked. This has given rise to a new wave of technology and gadgets that promise to keep all of your accounts and data safe. Just plug it into your router at home and voila, all that data is locked in.

5 WEARABLES, FOR KIDS

The wearables market didn’t do as well as we would have loved it to last year. We were looking towards the likes of Samsung, Google, and Apple to make big waves in the market but they ended up disappointing too. Then, Pebble returned to the floor, and Fitbit started to wear Jawbone out with a patent infringement fight. However, there seems to be one aspect of the market that everyone now wants to concentrate upon.

The tech for wearables is simple and less expensive than the one you would use for a smartphone. This makes it the best option for kids, and at CES, we might start to see a new wave of wearables that have been designed and optimized for children.

6 VR HEADSETS WITHOUT TAILS

VR headsets have been around for a while now, and even though they are cool, we would love to have them as much more mobile units, not something that we would always have to connect to a PC. With Intel already working on something tagged “Project Alloy’, we, and a lot of other people, would be more than willing to try this out. At CES, we also get to see it, given that it would be one of the exhibitions with the most attention generated by it.

7 EVEN EARPHONES ARE WIRELESS

We have been seeing wireless audio around for a while now, but in the space of the past few months, there seemed to be a new craze that sent all manufacturers into the works to bring out wireless earbuds. They were supposed to work as earphones, but have no wires at all. They would not even have as much as a single wire to connect them both. The concept is clean, neat, and something that we would look forward to. With Apple AirPods in the pipelines already, CES is shaping up to be a bloody showdown with any other company that rears its head in this department.