The consumer technology industry is on the verge of the most exciting transformation and expansion. But what pushes this transformation. Undeniably, a prolific spread of network technologies, the internet, the Internet of things, millions of smart devices, AI (Artificial Intelligence), and of course, the cloud network.
To celebrate the innovation in this segment, the biggest show, CES 2020, of consumer technology is running in the Las Vegas Convention Center. It has more than 50 years of history of introducing next-gen innovations in the marketplace and is the biggest gathering place for the biggest giants in the consumer tech space.
Technically speaking, it is owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), and it has been at the forefront of pioneering thinkers and business leaders. Well, last year, CES 2019 featured—Air Taxi, Micro LED 4K TV, Roll-up Screens, Wearable devices, Medical Diagnostics, and others. But this year CES 2020 has started unique and more focused on 5G, AI, IoT, robotics, Wi-Fi 6, edge computing, automation, blockchain, quantum computing, AR, and VR.
Let’s have a look at some updates from the biggest tech giants—
From all the updates till now, Google has amassed most of the limelight with its AI voice-powered “Google Assistant” Features.
Google has already delighted on the note that Google Assistant users have surpassed 500 million. So to kill it further on this no., the tech giant has shown up with many updates in its voice assistant. The first feature is “WebPage Reading” which will empower Android devices by saying “Hey Google, read this page” and Assistant will start to read the page by generating a pretty lifelike reading. The second feature is aimed toward making homes smart, as it allows users to schedule some tasks and empower them to request things you want to happen later in the day. Like you say “Hey Google, turn on the lights” at 6 pm, the assistant will process this as a command and switch on the lights as you mentioned.
And the third one is that Google empowers people to use smart displays as a digital chalkboards. It allows people to leave notes on the screen for others in the house to see.
Amazon & Blackberry
Both these consumer tech players have announced a new partnership designed to make it feasible for automakers to build and manage cars run by software.
For this to happen, Blackberry QNX operating system and over-the-air software update services, with AWS IoT cloud services for secure connectivity and telematics. Through this partnership and platform, Automakers can use these personalized features such as—Cockpit, Personalization, Vehicle acoustic conditioning, Vehicle health monitoring, and Advanced driver assistance systems.
NVIDIA
Everyone knows NVIDIA for its gaming hardware and software. So to give a makeover to this image, NVIDIA has arrived with something different at CES 2020. It has displayed its commitment to GPU-driven artificial intelligence (AI) tools for autonomous vehicles and robots.
This time the gaming giant announced autonomous software for two products: NVIDIA Issac, its robotics development platform, and Drive AGX Orin, which is the latest component of NVIDIA’s software-defined automated vehicle (AV) platform. It is the finest attempt of the consumer tech giant is making a federated system that has all the potential that will make NVIDIA DRIVE one of the smartest, most well-modeled AV platforms available.
Intel
This time Intel has arrived with its big ambitions for 5G network transformation, artificial intelligence (AI), and new partnerships with around 120 companies. Let’s have a look at some of its great partnerships with other players.
- Netflix: Intel is advancing the partnership it announced with, Netflix, one of the biggest streaming services around the world. It is for better streaming, lower bit rates, and smaller files, which don’t comprise video content.
- Habana: Through Habana Labs, which Intel acquired for training and inference, will increase a 60% increase in training through the development of the Xeon scalable processors with the “fastest ramping Xeon processor”.
- Google: Intel has extended its partnership with Google and the company’s Athena will be used in ASUS Flipbook C436 and Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook.
- HP: The HP Dragonfly Elite will use Intel-tech with a 360-hinge, a privacy screen, and is the first laptop made from plastic recycled from the ocean.
IBM
IBM’s approached CES 2020 with its latest Watson-powered AdvertisingAccelerator. This will make it easier for brands and marketers to use machine learning to optimize ads before they go live. This predictive audience tool uses artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to identify and recommend creative assets most likely to drive engagement in a target audience. It also helps brands to improve the performance of their campaigns.
IBM advertising accelerator with Watson makes AI more accessible to advertisers by driving faster predictive models and actionable insights. It helps advertisers to get a better understanding of their targeted audiences and their preferences.
Lenovo
The world’s first 5G supported is here at CES 2020 and it is launched by Lenovo. It is from Lenovo’s Yoga range. It was started with the joint venture with Qualcomm SCX, but they have launched this year officially at CES 2020. This will provide an ultra-fast internet connection with super-low latency. The users will get more productivity and save time while performing high-end tasks with 5G.
Samsung
Now, it comes to robotics, the soul of any consumer tech event. This time at CES 2020, Samsung Technology and Advanced Research Labs (Star) unveiled Neon, an artificial human. Neon is a humanoid artificial intelligence (AI) avatar, and it looks like a human and can respond to questions in real-time with some real human expressions.
As per Samsung, we can’t call it a true AI assistant, as it is truly a chatbot and not intended to be acquainted with everything. Talking about its availability, then it will take three or four years to reach the public.
However Neon is funded by Samsung and is part of Samsung’s STAR Labs, but its artificial humans are not a Samsung product.
IBM and Daimler
There has been a lot of research going on next-generation automotive batteries by using quantum computing and quantum chemistry to simulate the chemical makeup of lithium-sulfur batteries. Both companies have already claimed that this battery will be more powerful, longer-lasting, and come at a cheaper cost than lithium-ion batteries that are widely used.
A Thoughtful Summary
This year’s CES event is more exciting than ever this year. More than 4,500 companies from across the globe are participating in the four-day event which featured thousands of new and innovative products. It encircled all the things the tech community can expect from a full-fledged tech event. Like it featured innovative traditional technology to introduce some emerging technology like—Quantum computing, Virtual Reality, Edge computing, and Wi-fi. Now we are hoping that all these announcements we have mentioned will get off the ground as promised by these tech players.
