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Top: Alles wichtige zur diesjährigen CES

Amazon Alexa war der heimliche Hit der CES 2016

Sowohl The Verge als auch ZDNet berichten von der Dominanz von Amazon Alexa bei auf der CES vorgestellten Smart-Home-Geräten.

The Verge:

But the most important name in the smart home is the one you’re least likely to find plastered inside the cavernous halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center: Alexa.

The name corresponds to Amazon’s cloud-based voice assistant, which began as the personal assistant inside the online shopping company’s Echo speaker that went on sale to the public in June. Over the course of a few months, however, Alexa has moved beyond Echo and into a host of third-party devices, in part thanks to Amazon’s $100 million Alexa Fund, which helps other companies incorporate the software into their products.

Now those investments are bearing fruit. At CES 2016, Amazon is a stealth attendee. Without a booth or logo in sight, Alexa is weaving its way into third-party products here as varied as home security cameras, lighting systems, and Ford vehicles.

ZDNet zum Hintergrund, warum eine Alexa-Integration so attraktiv ist:

Why the sudden the movement for third-party Alexa adoption? Simply put, Amazon is providing all of the tools to make it easy and free for developers and device makers.

It doesn’t hurt that Alexa is quite good at hearing and responding to requests, either. There’s no need for a company to spend tons of R&D to develop its own speech-recognition system that taps into the cloud when Amazon provides a more than serviceable option.

And while we’re hearing all about gesture controls as well as AR and VR as interfaces at CES, speech – when done right – may be the best interface of all when it comes to the smarthome.

Gerüchten zufolge wird Amazon in den nächsten Wochen eine portable und günstigere Version des zugehörigen Amazon Echo vorstellen. (Echo ist das sprachgesteuerte Smart-Home-Gerät von Amazon, Alexa die Sprachinterface-Plattform dahinter.)

Autos, VR, Wearables

heise:

Die Autoindustrie war auf der CES dick im Geschäft: Keynotes kamen von von Diess und General-Motors-Chefin Mary Barra, Audi, BMW, Daimler, VW sowie die US-Hersteller stellten aus. (..)
Zu den heißen CES-Themen gehörten in diesem Jahr darüber hinaus Virtual Reality und Wearables. Letztere zählen zu den dynamisch wachsenden Produktkategorien, in welche die Branchenverbände ihre Hoffnungen setzen. Wearables, Action Cams und Bluetooth-Soundsysteme sollen ausgleichen, dass das Geschäft mit klassischer Unterhaltungselektronik stagniert.

Fitness at CES

Marktanalyst Jan Dawson auf Techpinions (Paywall):

There were announcements from a couple of the bigger names in the fitness device space at CES, but they were received fairly differently. Fitbit announced a smartwatch – the Blaze – and its stock promptly tanked as investors took this as a sign Fitbit was leaving its areas of strength and going into direct competition with smartwatch makers like Apple, Samsung, and others. Withings, meanwhile, announced a connected thermometer, much more in its wheelhouse as a connected health and fitness device manufacturer, that seemed to be much better received. It’s debatable whether the product itself is a winner – it’s a very expensive entrant in a category which already has plenty of cheaper alternatives – but it is at least consistent with Withings’ strengths and focus as a company. The other major trend in evidence in the health and fitness space was a move towards starting to not just track fitness and health conditions but to begin to treat them. I got pitches from quite a few companies selling devices intended to help alleviate various acute and chronic ailments and this feels like a big area of expansion over the next couple of years. This side of the market comes with significant additional barriers to entry in the form of FDA regulation and has therefore been slower to get started, but promises to have more stickiness with consumers than pure fitness trackers which have notoriously high abandonment rates.

Das Beste der CES laut Wired

Wired unter anderem über Carl Zeiss:

Remember Google Glass? Nah, best not to. In case you’re still having trouble letting go, Carl Zeiss has smart glasses that may let you finally let go. Its new system functions like Glass, but looks like, well, just plain old glasses. That is, ultimately, the dream. The Zeiss lenses on display at CES weren’t totally seamless; you can see lines there. But they’re not any more aggressive or disruptive than a pair of bifocals. And in exchange for that minimal invasion you get augmented reality capabilities without the discomfort of looking like a techno-goon. The lenses work with a variety of frame styles, meaning applications can be either

Top-Trends der CES

Venturebeat:

That set me up for this post on the top trends of the tech industry’s biggest North American trade show. These are the trends that affect more than one company, or send a signal that a new category or sub-industry is rising around this trend. Revolutionary products, of course, may be one of a kind. And we didn’t really see anything obvious on that front. But trends indicate that something that has been talked about for a while may finally be at the point where they’re becoming real. Many of these trends develop over multiple years, starting as ridiculous or too expensive, and eventually graduating to smart and useful.

So what did we find? Forget about TVs and smartphones. There’s more innovation happening in previously dumb objects, thanks to the Internet of Things, and in virtual reality devices.

Frankreich auf der CES

The Rude Baguette:

As a result, the CES Innovation Awards show that the quality matches the quantity of projects that came to CES this year: 20+ IoT companies based in France were honored by the jury of experts in different categories, among whom there were the French industry leaders such as Parrot, Netatmo or Withings.

Segway stellte Robotik-Version vor

Mobile Geeks:

Im Rahmen der CES 2016 päsentierte das Unternehmen seine zukünftige Ausrichtung, inklusive einer kleinen Überraschung. Die nächste Generation des Segway mutiert – wenn man ihn nicht fährt – zu einem kleinen Roboter für’s Smart Home! Das Modell ist z.B. mit „Armen“ erweiterbar und soll über verschiedene Kamera- und Umgebungssensoren in der Lage sein, selbstständig durch Räume zu navigieren oder seinem Besitzer zu folgen. Verantwortlich für diesen Punkt ist Intel, die zu dem Projekt u.a. ihre RealSense-Kameratechnologie beisteuern und dem Segway Robot so eine dreidimensionale Erfassung von Objekten ermöglichen.

Bosch Connected Car Concept

CNet hat einige Fotos des Autokonzepts von Bosch veröffentlicht.

Samsung Gear S2 Smartwatch wird iPhone-kompatibel

Pocket-lint:

During its CES 2016 press conference, Samsung announced that it will be bringing iOS compatibility to its Gear S2 smartwatch.

CES 2016—Observations for Product People

Steven Sinofsky (Ex-Microsoft, jetzt a16z) in einer langen Zusammenfassung der CES aus seiner Sicht:

The big challenge is no surprise. Software development is unable to keep up with the hardware. What is going to separate one device from another or one company from another will be the software execution, not just the choice of chipset or specs for a peripheral/sensor. It would be hard to overstate the clear opportunity to build winning products using stronger software relative to competitors. Said another way, spending too many cycles on hardware pits you against the supply chain for most products.
Some of the devices that include most of these include a rubber duck (speaker, remote control), knit cap (music player), light bulb (speaker, camera, climate), walkie-talkies (location, camera), power strip (remote control, telemetry, power usage report), flower pot (soil water level, camera). The list goes on and on!

Samsung Family Hub refrigerator – Der smarte Kühlschrank ist zurück

Venturebeat:

The idea is to enrich family life using the fridge as the center of the kitchen. You can see if you left your oven or burners on via a smartphone app. You can put your kids’ art work on the 21.5-inch high-definition screen, or you can view the objects in the fridge from your smartphone. That’s because there are cameras in the fridge that take pictures of what is inside the fridge every time you close the door. (..)

The Family Hub also lets you access Samsung Smart Things, the platform for the Internet of Things in the home. Using the fridge, you can turn off the lights at bedtime and lock your doors. Home automation and control can be fully integrated into the hub. You can stream music or television from the Samsung TV to the Family Hub.

Ein sehr samsungiges Produkt.

Siehe auch dieses Video von Wired.

Parce One: Wlan-Steckdose mit Homekit aus Deutschland

Housecontrollers:

Das Münchner Startup Unternehmen Parce hat auf der Elektronikmesse CES in Las Vegas seine WLAN-Steckdose Parce One vorgestellt.

Der Zwischenstecker ist mit Apples Smart Home System HomeKit kompatibel und ermöglicht es, ein eingestecktes elektronisches Gerät via App und der Sprachsteuerung Siri zu bedienen und zu kontrollieren.

Podcasts

Die Analysten bei Techpinions als auch die Macher von Techdirt haben in ihren Podcasts auf die CES zurückgeschaut.

Meldungen

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• CES: ili ist das erste Übersetzungs-Wearable
• The best videos from CES 2016 – CNET
• CES 2016: Die Tops und Flops der Messe | heise online
• The 8 weirdest gadgets from CES 2016 VentureBeat
• Fitness für Frauen – Neue Wearables bei der CES 2016