Entertainment & Entrepreneurship

I had the opportunity to attend CES this year. Walking CES and reading the announcements from Macworld, some clear trends have emerged. First, this was not a year of great innovation. It is a year of consolidation. The holiday "buy" of the year was the Nintendo Wii – a product which came out last year; CES showed hundreds of manufacturers playing catch-up to Apple's iPhone with new integration of GPS to the suite of phone, browser, MP3 and Video players; Apple itself had the biggest innovation the re-enabling of iPhone software on the iPod Touch.

For business built on innovation, this is a year of catching breath and consolidating distribution.

The second trend emphasizes the interface not the activity. For every technological innovation, there are a multitude of manufacturers. The differences are the user experience – the box in which the product exists, the screens on which it is viewed, and the buttons for interacting. Apple's second announcement was a significantly thinner laptop. It adds a "wow" factor to an otherwise boring field. At CES five companies have ultramobile laptops – under two pounds with full functionality and a price under $500.00. For any of these to be successful, the machine must be comfortable to use at an acceptable price.

The most significant part of this trend is the screens. Samsung won CES as the most innovative of the major brands this year, showing a host of products that push the consumer experience forward. Samsung demonstrated some use of OLED-based products with eye-popping visuals. Sony will also benefit as the developer of this technology. OLED screens are significantly better than plasma or LCD - but expensive and difficult to manufacture.

Similarly, both Sony and Amazon are pushing the book readers. Sony's Reader is benefiting from Amazon's Kindle to encourage attention to the platform. Both are limited by a single source for the screens, however, so until more manufacturing capacity grows, the price and innovation will move slowly. If the ultramobiles can catch up, then the book readers will be eclipsed, but only time will tell. 

In the alternative, an even lighter ultramobile with the long battery life of the book readers will win the market. The Kindle and iPod Touch are both nearly ultramobiles – so next year’s innovation could be the combination of these products, so long as the screen and interface make it exciting rather than awkward.

Get busy – next year’s shows are nearly upon us.