At the beginning of the year like this, the tech giants in the world gather together to exhibit their new tech break-throughs and help define what the world should expect in the months ahead.
This year was not different when the giants of the tech world gathered in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES, 2018). As one would expect, being the biggest tech show yearly, a lot of preparation by the organisers and exhibitors was put into it.
The CES, as reported has been a tradition since 1967. In marking its 50th anniversary, it had over 3,500 exhibitors – including giants such as LG, Samsung, Intel etc. Each of these companies had something amazing to showcase that will either be ready for consumers sometime this year or in few years to come.
It is very important as tech users and enthusiasts to keep an eagle-eye on these happenings, so we are not taken aback when they begin to impact our businesses and lifestyles.
Prime exhibitions included Smart home gadgets, LED TV innovations, Amazing innovations with cars, Robots doing all sorts of things, convertible computers etc.
- A recap of 2017 Tech trends
At the beginning of last year, various tech trends were predicted to drive our tech adoption. Let’s try and recap them here. High on the agenda for the year was AI (Artificial Intelligence), which had seen some big investment in the previous year. The general projection was that this huge investment will eventually see AI beginning a true world launch in 2018.
Cyber Security concerns have been on the agenda-board year after year, and of course were predicted to become a prime consideration. We can all testify to the fact that Cyber Attacks were so rife just in 2016, but no comfortable remedy was wholly accepted to curtail it. Several Tech Giants have fallen victim to these attacks, including Yahoo. There was therefore a need to assure clients on every platform that their data can be safely guarded from cyber-attacks going forward.
Also, Big Data has become a great topic in recent years. Having been on the plate for a while now, there was a new twist to it which seems to suggest that much more needs to be done in getting very good, if not excellent, results from the data mined. The big question was: are businesses sure decisions in the past had been any good relying on big data? If they weren’t, are they looking to do it better next time?
Let’s not forget the new trend in Social media as we were ending 2016, with fake news becoming the new norm. It became very worrying in the elections here in Ghana and those of the US. These forced tech giants such as Facebook to quickly bring out solutions to verify new items shared on their platforms. This trend of fake news can be aimed at company or personal online reputations. This obviously placed online reputation management high on the agenda for businesses and personalities.
The thought of the next level of network technology, 5G, was also making the rounds in the latter days of 2016. This initiated some aggressive research activities in 2017.
- Some Key Tech trends from CES 2018
This year’s show saw some form of competition between tech giants such as LG and Samsung as they revealed their latest innovation in the LED TV category. Also, key to notice – as stated above – was the smart-gadget category, which suggests that soon we will be communicating with our TVs, Fridges and other home appliances. So let’s take a look at the following:
- Smart Home: One couldn’t miss the amazing innovations that were exhibited for the smart home category. It would not be wrong to assume that Smart home devices are not too far from reaching our homes, at the most toward end of this year.The likes of Google, Apple, and LG are all fighting in this space that was once dominated by Amazon’s Alexa.
The thing is that experiments are now far advanced to have typical home appliances connecting to the likes of Google Assistant, and Amazon Echo. And with the big announcement by Samsung that, two years from now, the world expects the next Samsung refrigerator or washing machine to be communicating with us. Note that this is not so far-reaching, as we had LG already taking the lead by revealing the Alexa-enabled fridge.
- Changing Mobile Phone Usage: The mobile device’s usage can be predicted to see some innovations that will help redefine usage.
Biometric security and access are going to be in the next line-up of mobile devices to be on the market. It’s going to be common to have, in addition to fingerprint features, facial recognition to access mobile devices.
Next will be the ability to charge mobile devices without cords, so from a single point, various mobile devices can wirelessly be charged.
Then there is Internet speed. From the beginning of the year 2017, there was much talk and research into 5G technology. This is predicted to be possible, if not mainstream, before close of the year.
Let me not forget the Movi smartphone, an android phone with an integrated projector to enable you watch videos on you wall.
- LED TV Innovation: When the LED TV category is mentioned today, you are sure to see competition from these two: LG and Samsung. CES 2018 was not different for these two.
Samsung unveiled its 146” LED TV called ‘the wall’. Samsung says it is taking the lead in Modular TV technology and that TV sizing should be flexible.
LG also unveiled its roll-able OLED TV. So now you should be able to roll your TV like you would do a poster.
There are certainly going to be innovations in the VR category that we will see in the market soon. Then the printing industry, especially that with 3D and scanning technology, will be seeing some new additions.
As individuals or business, we cannot succeed in today’s world without paying attention to these happenings which will obviously affect us in the near-future.
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