What gizmos are you going to buy this year?
If what was on display at CES and Macworld was any indication--and it usually is--you'll soon be shopping for networked televisions, cellphones with video and touch screens and a host of other products that take advantage of breakthroughs in HDTV, multicore computing, ubiquitous broadband and third-generation cellular networks.
So if last year was the year of HDTV--digital TV sales topped an estimated $23 billion as prices on digital sets fell through the floor--this year will go further. Consumers who bought up the screens in droves--almost 24 million were sold--now hunger for content that would truly exploit the capabilities of their new sets. They'll get it in 2007.
In Pictures:
Tech To Look For In 2007
Video:
What Would Geeks Do?
A potential hit: MediaSmart wireless networking HDTVs from Hewlett-Packard, as well as the Bravia Internet Video Link system from Sony that will plug into the Internet to grab content over the Internet from AOL, Grouper, Yahoo! and Sony Pictures Entertainment and deliver it right to the TV, without the need for a computer.
Apple also released its Apple TV box, which allows users to wirelessly stream movies and music from iTunes on their computer, whereas Netgear's upcoming Digital Entertainer HD can stream pretty much every other type of video and audio file from your PC and can also show videos from YouTube and songs from BitTorrent.
In Pictures:
CES 2007 Preview
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Additionally, LG, Sharp and Samsung have all expressed interest in networking their upcoming TVs. Collectively, it means that the television is becoming just another node on the network. And it makes sense, seeing how today's digital televisions are basically the evolution of the computer monitor, and the more processing power we stuff into the television, the more computer-like it becomes--a powerful tool that can pull its weight on a home network, taking back the title of the entertainment hub of the household.
Just as consumers have thrown money at new televisions, cellular providers have spent billions on their 3G networks. Sprint and Verizon now offer EV-DO, while Cingular has recently rolled out its UMTS/HSDPA service (trust me, you don't need or want to know what the letter jumbles stand for), both offering near broadband speeds for wireless devices.
Business consumers have gotten used to the speedy access to e-mail on the go using their smartphones, and now a new generation of these devices is slimmer, smarter and more multifunctional--and nonbusiness types are starting to lust after them, too.
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The floor of CES was awash in new smartphones (such as the Palm Treo 750) and music phones (Samsung SGH-F300 Ultra Music Phone), as well as phones that play television (LG VX9400). And Apple teased its cultish fans at Macworld with an upcoming phone that simply does everything and looks beautiful doing it (iPhone, or whatever it's going to be called once the Cisco.
As both digital television and cellular phones converge with the infinite content of the Internet, new forms of content navigation and device management become necessary. In the living room, remote controls are swiftly approaching an unmanageable array of buttons for various devices and on-screen menus so extensive that it can take an hour to get from channel 1 to channel 1001. Likewise, as smartphones have become both smaller and more button heavy, there was a need for the design geniuses at Apple to step in and rethink the basic interface.
Watch for multitouch screens, led by Apple's iPhone, to change the way we interact with our devices by eliminating hard buttons in favor of on-screen dynamic manipulation of icons. Voice control interfaces will also go from laughable novelties to surprisingly accurate input devices. Microsoft has been quietly developing the technology in a collaboration with Ford Motor.
They'll launch the Sync system in over a dozen of the automaker's vehicles. As its name implies, Sync promises to link all of the driver's various electronic devices under one voice-command system.
