Since its opening in 1967, the CES Conference held in January each year has been the world's largest consumer technology product trade fair. This year's CES is still lively, but there are also different changes compared with previous years.
First Absence of Microsoft 。 Although Ballmer appeared at CES, he was at the Nvidia booth. In fact, Microsoft is just learning from the "Big Four". The four most popular technology companies, Apple Google、Facebook、 Amazon never makes an appearance on CES, but launches new products at its own pace.
However, due to the absence of giants, at this CES, the small companies that were covered by giants in the past began to be noticed, The emergence of smart watches is proof 。
[caption id="attachment_10518" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The world's thinnest electronic ink watch CST-1, with a thickness of only 0.8mm [/caption]
It is worth noting that Pebble and CST-1, the two most popular products in this wave of smart watches, have a common feature: they all come from the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter（ Love to play computer games Several products from Kickstarter have also been reported before). CST-1, the world's thinnest electronic ink watch with unique design, has raised $200000 within 48 hours since its launch on Tuesday, and Pebble has achieved 68929 popularity and raised more than $10 million. In addition, before Pebble, another product called TikTok+LunaTik once set a record for raising funds for Kickstarter. This product is a peripheral device that can turn your iPad Nano into a cool smart watch. This product also participated in this year's CES and received a lot of attention.
[caption id="attachment_10519" align="aligncenter" width="639"] New phone UrbanHello [/caption]
In addition to the above smart watches, we can also see many projects from Kickstarter at CES 2013, such as the unique telephone UnbanHello Wireless speakers Zooka and 1Q dedicated to iOS devices, card USB charging adapter ChargeCard, gravity sensing skateboard ZBoard, Bluetooth stickers to help you find things if you like to lose things StickNFind, wireless sensor Misfit Shine (from another crowdfunding platform Indiegogo), AR glasses dedicated to games , etc. It is the existence of these new projects that to some extent make up for the absence of giants.
[caption id="attachment_10520" align="aligncenter" width="799"] Wireless speaker Zooka for iOS devices [/caption]
Why can these projects get the same attention as the previous giants on CES?
In fact, there are still some giants behind these projects. ChargeCard, Zooka and 1Q are part of the "Apple economy", while the rise of smart watches is directly related to the popularity of iOS, Android and other smart phones. The tycoons just retreated behind the scenes, but still focused on the latest and coolest ideas.
[caption id="attachment_10547" align="aligncenter" width="619"] Testers who wear Oculus Rift glasses to play games [/caption]
This is also the biggest difference between a large company and the KickStarter project: if Google watches or Apple's smart watches are only 85000, then we will say that the project is over. But for a project like Pebble, this is an unprecedented success. The giants gave up the stage of CES, perhaps just to open up a new testing ground, amplify the ideas from small teams, screen out excellent ideas from the market reaction, and promote them to the market after improvement.
The Kickstarter project is not without benefits: compared with large companies, their only advantage is the ubiquitous creativity and inspiration, as well as the ability to execute quickly. Through such opportunities as CES, they were able to go from online to offline, accept more users' tests, and obtain more project funding (for example, the gravity sensing skateboard ZBoard raised 279000 dollars through Kickstarter before, and again raised 750000 dollars after participating in CES, almost three times the previous amount).
[caption id="attachment_10545" align="aligncenter" width="670"] Zboard raised another 750000 dollars through CES [/caption]
In addition, although Microsoft and the "Big Four" are absent from CES, for Samsung and other large companies, CES is still a good place to understand consumer information and needs, and to do a small scale "stress test" before formally introducing products to the market. Another highlight of this CES is that Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are still far away from international brands such as Samsung and Sony in the eyes of consumers, but Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo's performance on CES is no less than that of major brands that released new models in the same period.
A few days ago, Tencent Technology asked a question: "What is left without the CES of popular consumer electronics products?" The article replied: "Shuttling between stalls with hundreds of smart phone shells in various colors sometimes makes people suddenly forget the purpose of coming to Las Vegas." It is not surprising to have this idea, It's like when we were young, we always looked forward to the Spring Festival because of the lack of materials at that time. Only during the Spring Festival can we have many delicious and interesting things; As we grow up, the New Year holiday seems to lose its fun, but as long as we want, any day can be as lively as the New Year holiday - CES is also the same, with the accelerated development of technology The arrival of the mobile Internet era With the fragmented transmission of information and the reduction of the threshold for entrepreneurship, CES is no longer the only stage for us to express our love for consumer electronics, and large companies are no longer the only source of creating popularity. The occupation of CES by the KickStarter project reflects the trend of the rapidly changing consumer market we are in. It is their existence that makes the consumer electronics market around us colorful and endless.
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