CES 2011 Highlights

Yet another CES concluded last week. Another big one, with over 2700 booths and 140,000 attendees makes one believe the economy is alive and kicking. Here are some highlights:






Tablets
iPad can expect to have some serious competition.  Analysts estimate that there are now over 80+ iPad clones including Asus (Eee Pad Slate), Lenovo (LePad) and Sharp (Galapagos). CNET chose Motorola's Xoom as best in show for 2011, but Moto wasn't alone in entering the Android tab fray. BlackBberry's tablet entry, the Playbook, also made its first appearance to massive crowds - and it stood apart from most other players simply because it's not built on Android, but rather on BlackBerry's operating system.

Connected Home
More and more devices would now be connected over your home network. Internet is now built into TVs, Ovens and Refrigerators.  Samsung and LG showcased their own versions of "SmartTV," both ripe with basic applications meant to enhance the TV viewing experience and keep the viewer connected. It will be really interesting to see how manufacturers and developers bring social functionality to the big screen. Facebook and Twitter are already there, but that's only the beginning. There were several new versions of networked  home theaters too, and some were going to support Apple's AirPlay technology. GE showing up for the first time in CES, had its focus on “smart” home technologies aimed to give attendees of the mammoth trade show an idea of how the company believes the “Connected Home of the Future” will operate. According to GE, the technologies showcased at CES 2011 “will help consumers reduce health- and energy-related costs and redefine the benchmark for household performance.”

Mobile Phones
The highlight clearly was Motorola's Atrix, a standard Android phone, but has several firsts, atleast for a mobile phone.  It plugs into a laptop shell to afford the user a full keyboard and larger screen. Moto is also making docks for other devices like TVs. The Atrix can output full 1080p video via its dock, making it an impressive machine for both productivity and entertainment. There was also a buzz of a slew of 4G devices from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and other wireless carriers.

TVs
3D TVs made their debut in last year's CES. For the second year in a row, blurry, double-vision flat panels were visible everywhere - televisions that looked sharp only when you put on ridiculous-looking 3D glasses. Many of those glasses are just as big, heavy and expensive. Further, with new technologies, shrinking form factors shrinking and prices plummeting, the television biz is clearly ready for primetime in 2011. Some models go bigger, e.g. Mitsubishi’s new 92-inch 3D Home Cinema unit. Others, including the LG LW9500, add full-array LED backlighting for better colors and contrast, plus super-thin dimensions. But the most progressive promise glasses-free 3D or add WiFi compatibility for streaming music, movies and TV, or access to social networks, online video and games through downloadable apps.

There were some other small tidbits too:

• Apart from the iPad clones there were plenty of iPad cases, iPad holders, iPad keyboards, iPad chargers, iPad alarm clocks. Also, iPads had displaced laptops/PCs in the booths for presentations.
• Ultra-thin laptops and Blu-ray players such as Samsung’s 9 Series and BD-D7500 (a scant 1.1 inches deep, despite boasting WiFi connectivity and 2D-to-3D image upconversion). Other ultra-thin gadgets include: Smartphones like the 9.2mm thick LG Optimus Black, external hard drives such as Seagate’s minute GoFlex HDD and gizmos including Casio’s adjustable frame-sporting Tryx camera etc.,
• Some companies introduced Smart energy monitoring, as more and more devices in the home will start getting connected.
• Connected cars. Ford Sync continues to innovate and Hyundai was showing a very cool demo of an augmented-reality interface that's projected onto the windshield as you're driving. Toyota owners can soon enjoy in-car online searches, restaurant reservations and Internet radio courtesy of multimedia app system Entune. 

Thank you very much,


RamP!
ramp [dot] ramp [at] gmail [dot] com
 

Technologies behind Networked Audio

There are several technologies/standards that are needed to realize the next big thing - the networked audio. In a series of posts I'd be giving an overview of some of the following:

• Networking (Ethernet, WiFi, TCP/IP, UDP stacks)
• Streaming Protocols (WMS/MMS, Radea, Shoutcast etc.,)
• Audio decoders (MP3, WMA, FLAC, OCG, AAC etc.,)
• DRM (Cardea, Janus etc.,)
• Music Services (vTuner, Rhapsody, Napster, Sirius)
• UPnP/DLNA
• Win7/WLK

First we would be looking into UPnP/DLNA.

Apple buys Lala

In a very interesting move and sign of things to come, Apple confirmed that it has bought Lala.com for an undisclosed sum. With these Apple enters into streaming music which would increase its revenue. Lala.com has about 8 million songs available for streaming and purchase. Users can listen to a song in full before buying. Unlimited plays of a song on the Web cost 10 cents, and an MP3 download can be had for an additional 79 cents (as against iTunes price which ranges from 69cents to $1.29 per song.

Implications for the Consumer Electronics Vendors

The expected explosion in the networked audio segment would have implications to the three major stakeholders of the eco system. We looked at the implications for the music industry and the broadcasters. In this post we will focus on the possible implications for the consumer electronics (CE) vendors.

CE vendors play a crucial role in bringing the music to the home. The growth of networked audio is directly dependent on the the no.of devices available in the market, its price point and ease of use. The vendors themselves will have to overcome the following challenges:

• Networked audio products would need strong sales support and consumer education to raise consumer's interest.
• Ease of use, high quality UI and robust wireless operation will be necessary to move the market from niche to high volume.
  
• Consumers expect to have more convenience and immediacy (no need to boot up a PC for example), therefore the existing wireless handheld devices should act as internet tuners.
• Consumers tend to already have devices that can access internet (Smartphones, PMPs and ofcourse PCs) and would be sensitive to price for adding another device/feature especially at a time when the world is recovering from the downturn.
• Whole Home Audio (WHA), is unlikely to appeal to the mass and may be a overkill. 
• Networking should add value to the existing products (internet radio, AVRs, speaker docs etc.,). This would ensure faster convergence so that more and more products will offer both docking and networked connectivity.
  

Thank you very much,


RamP!
ramp.ramp@gmail.com

Implications for the Consumer Electronics Venodors

After studying the implications to the broadcasters and the music industry, this post looks at the implications of the consumer electronics (CE) vendors. I can think of the following:

Implication for the broadcasters

As more and more audio devices get networked, it would have several implication for the stakeholders - The Music Industry, Traditional Broadcaster and the CE companies. In the last post we looked at the implications for the Music Industry and lets now see the implications for the broadcaster.

• The power of internet to reach across local and international boundaries would result in audience fragmentation. 
• Internet delivery is inherently low cost and presents low barriers of entry to competition. Contrast this with the higher investment costs for broadcast infrastructure. Besides In-car listening is still the largest segment of traditional radio listening and therefore the high cost infrastructure is likely to maintained for many years.
• Next generation networked audio products will come with better UIs and larger color LCD screen presenting a new opportunity for visual ads too, apart from audio-only ads.
• Digital features like pause, replay and seek, as well as on-demand content like podcasts would be introduced for broadcasting making the experience lot more interactive.
• Interactivity ofcourse is the biggest attraction of internet radio. Live broadcasting, e-commerce and interactive advertising would all get inside the home.

Thank you very much,


RamP!
ramp.ramp@gmail.com

Implications for the Music Industry

In the last post we looked at the changes that one could expect in the global music market. These changes would have several implications to the Music Industry itself, the Traditional Broadcasters and CE (Consumer Electronics) vendors. In this post, we will look into the implications to the music industry.

• Biggest change would be the importance of "webcasting" which is poised to become the main source of streaming audio, as opposed to the traditional radio's role in promoting the recorded music.
• Consumers likely to expect such webcasts to be free or very low cost. This would mean established subscription services like Rhapsody and Sirius (who currently charge about $12 a month) are likely to be challenged by new players charging very low subscription rates (example: Pandora) or even completely free.
• Low barriers to entry and the global nature of interner only mean that thousands of webcasters might emerge and this could challenge the current licensing structure of music rights.
• Advertising could be the way forward to make-up some costs.
  
• It would be interesting to see what Apple does. Currently iTunes dominates the paid download market, would they introduce subscription? or even free streaming? Or would they come up with yet another game-changing strategy?
  

Thank you very much,


RamP!
ramp.ramp@gmail.com