If you like/care about/work with technology, you were probably following the great amount of news articles about what’s going on in Las Vegas for the past days. Among the overwhelming number of new gadget announcements, speeches and a lot of irrelevant stuff, I see some things worth taking a close look at. Here they are:
1. Windows on ARM
This is probably the most relevant fact in the entire show. Microsoft demonstrated a prototype of the next generation of Windows running on SoC designs from NVIDIA (Tegra), Texas Instruments (OMAP 4) and Qualcomm (Snapdragon). From a convergence across PCs, smartphones and tablets standpoint, this makes sense.
But in order to make this work, they will need to either make it a suitable OS for mobile devices (remember: there was no mention to the next-gen UI, so some surprises may arise), or create new form-factors (or re-invent current ones) to use the new architecture. In simple terms, it needs to either become a major player coming from behind, or set a new trend and create a new market. Otherwise it’ll continue to struggle and lose ground to its competitors.
This also might mean the death of the PC as we know it. Apple also seems to be working on a similar direction with iOS and Mac OS X Lion. If Microsoft can pull this out successfully, we will finally be able to make no distinction between our devices from a software perspective, which is good. I really hope Microsoft’s strategy works this time.
2. Apple
No, I’m not drunk. I know they didn’t even bother to show up at CES, but judging by the number of new tablets shown this year, I must say that Apple was very successful in creating a new market with the iPad. Every single one of its competitors is trying to catch up. The new Honeycomb announced by Google brings definitely Android into the game (before that, it was just a horrible workaround) and if RIM manages to release the Playbook on time (I doubt it will, though), it’s another major player into the market. Microsoft continues to be the card left out, though. I don’t think Windows 7 works on a tablet. As I said before a million times, tablets are about content consumption, not content creation. And there’s where Windows 7 fails. Anyway, competition should be good this year in the tablets arena.
Another sign that things are good for Apple is the amount of new devices and manufacturers willing to integrate AirPlay in their products. Oh, and there’s also the Verizon iPhone myth hovering around (could actually become reality on Jan 11th, it seems).
So, for a show without Apple, it seems awfully a lot about Apple.
3. XBox
Microsoft seems to be strengthening its position as the world leader in the gaming market. Sony and Nintendo don’t seem to have a clue how to catch up and are mostly moving in a Brownian way. The new updates to Kinect will probably be a success and widen even more the gap between Microsoft and its competitors. Besides, it’s becoming a new way of controlling all the entertainment apparatus in the living room.
4. Honeycomb
The new version of Android for tablets looks great, and definitely puts Google into the game. Before that, all Android tablets we’ve seen were just bigger versions of smartphones, which was stupid. Now this new OS addresses all (or the majority of) the problems and will give its competitors (mainly Apple) something to think about. And they now have a 10” tablet running it (the new Motorola Xoom). I still think 7” tablets are useless.
The rest of the stuff is just toys. Playbook won’t be relevant until it’s an actual product and the hundreds of new Android are just a small evolution on what we currently have. So, nothing really relevant to the market for now. But this clearly shows that 2011 might be the year of Android.