CES 2023: Key Observations and Takeaways

This is the 56th year of CES and I have gone to 14 in person. It is fascinating to see how trends have changed in the past decade. This year too dreamers, innovators, designers, investors, and entrepreneurs congregated to create the future. For me, the conference is not just a conduit to the future but also a way to understand and analyze how people think and the art of the possible. CES has 100,000 attendees and 3000 exhibitors this year.

The growing Venn diagram between software and consumer goods with software-defined products, most having sensors and making IoT real. The enterprise and consumer convergence were also interesting to see with many B2B2C players becoming key exhibitors and speakers.

I could not walk every single hall this time given it was a quick in and out for me. However, I gathered key themes and observations by walking floors, talking to people, attending sessions, and triangulating them against industry trends.

New Categories

This year we saw large and independent sections for Sports Tech, Food Tech, and Digital Assets. There were also multiple Web 3 companies weaved into several sections and that emerging theme was hard to miss. The real pioneers and innovators of Web3 did not position themselves as “Web3” but as innovators, traditional crypto-native Web3 players caught some attention but the show was stolen by real use cases from innovative Web2 companies.

The Old Economy vs New Economy Divide

While it was commendable that players from the old economy who occupied prominent spots at CES put on a great show and had some notable innovative technology on display. The smaller, nimbler, cooler, and emerging companies stole the attention. At least for the physical part of the ?CES I attended, there was not much visible interest from people to flock to the iconic brands of the last century, hallway conversations also made it obvious that the audience was not here to visit the old economy players many of who have talked about digital transformation and emerging themes for years, but have been somewhat slower to depart from their older business models.

Metaverse and Web3

The advances in VR, AR, and GPUs all have threaded onto the metaverse as a thematic opportunity this year. Although many are skeptical about this and there is no universal definition of the metaverse, investments are pouring into space. Most exhibitors were headsets, devices, wearables, and experiences on display. Many retailers have taken to the trend and have invested in their own presence. Whether anyone likes it or, space is evolving in many directions. One can easily draw a hypothesis that opportunity is massive, but it is not something that will change lives overnight – it is a journey that has begun.

Robotics

One of the most exciting developments was in robotic automation, it has come a long way with a widespread scale visible on the horizon. There were robotic waiters and servers, robotic nurses, self-propelled wheelchairs, self-driving tractors equipped with AI, etc. Home automation with domestic helpers also saw some cool technology with solutions like Samsun’s Bot Handy which can now move around household objects applying the proper level of force with use cases such as cleaning rooms, sorting clothes, and moving dishes, etc.

3-D Printing

3-D printing has been around at CES for several years, they have now morphed into multiple decoupled segments as key capabilities e.g., manufacturing, suppliers, real estate, medical tech, and software, etc. Based on my observations, many of the 3-D printing companies have become ancillary capabilities across industries and cannot be considered a standalone hit at CES anymore.

The value equation in this space also seems to have migrated to the big e.g., 3-d printers which can print massive structures like houses, etc., or the small e.g., medical use cases at nano or atomic scale with everything between trending to commoditization and in a boring space. General audiences found the old economy players trying to say and message more of the same from their past years while traffic was higher for the newer, smaller companies bringing in differentiated technologies.

One of the bigger themes in 3-D printing was oriented toward solutions that could alleviate the global supply chain issues and multiple innovative solutions were displayed. Differentiated technology in the hands of well-capitalized players is finally showing promise and moving forward from the $5 3-D printed toy from past years.

Other Notable Themes

Companies have embraced ESG, and many have incorporated these principles into products aligning with savvy consumers and changing demographics who believe in mitigating the negative impact on the planet.

Cybersecurity for IoT, generative AI, Payment Tech,?Drones, etc. continues to be hot and is churning out companies at every layer of the stack.

Holograms were an impressive trend and some good use cases from customer service, advertising, and algorithmic colleagues were on display too.

Concluding Thoughts

CES is always overwhelming, and we try to juggle sessions, meetings, events, and juggle our day jobs so there are always items we skim through superficially and miss. Drones, Health Tech, and TVs were sections I missed and hence I do not have meaningful takeaways from the conference. Should any of you have seen items I might have missed - please add comments and I would love to learn from your experiences.