CES took over Las Vegas again last week and over 150,000 bright-eyed techies showed up to see what the world's technology companies have been toiling away on over the past year. Since not everyone at Rockfish could attend, we rely on those who did to bring back the latest and greatest that's happening in digital. Chief Growth Officer Michael Stich was able to breakdown his experience at CES into three notable themes for Rockfish and our clients.
Connected Everything – UnitedHealth Group had a huge presence in the Digital Health area, focused on using digital to drive health (vs. just insurance). WPP partner agency RLM Finsbury did a great job with MSFT to bring this up. With more connection points, our clients need to think about both newly-connected experiences (car, TV) and resulting partnerships (Google, Apple, etc..) as a new lens for their digital plans.
Gesturize Everything – Panasonic had a booth with full gesture-based menuing for iTV. Apple TV (later this year) will have Siri integrated in. We’re in front of voice recognition, gesture-based interfaces and underlying AI - it's going to pay off soon.
Windows 8 – This is still to be determined. The $1M question to me will be how consumers take to the UI. Phones / pricing / unified platform experience will all be there, but will consumers prefer the navigation vs. iOS/Android? This is worth keeping up to speed on. Security is also better so I’m expecting a regular refresh cycle for business, assuming cloud-based OS stays at bay for now.
If your curiosity is piqued, check out the articles below for more on CES.