CES 2018: The top 7 topics for your industry in 2018

The focus of this year’s CES was not exclusively on consumer-only gadgets. This year, remarkably many production-technologies were exhibited, confirming a trend already identified by many experts: b2b and b2c are becoming more and more the same.

B2C goes B2B, artificial intelligence and processors – the trends

Being the CONSUMER Electronic Show, b2b-related topics or services were not really found on CES so far. This year however, change seems to be about to happen – in the shape of a diversified range of IT-applications, interesting for companies as for end consumer. ISG put together an overview over the most relevant releases for businesses, service-providers and technology distributors. Here are the core impressions from Las Vegas:

1. The automotive market is connecting to the tech companies. Partnerships, investments, and new solutions abound between two previously distinctly separated markets. One company at the center of it is the navigation-services providing HERE, announcing new investments from Bosch and Continental while partnering with SAP and others.

2. Consumer providers are moving to B2B. Panasonic is an example of a company making the shift from consumer electronics to businesses services – in its case supply chain logistics, entertainment venue services, and autonomous and electric vehicle components.

3. The invasion of the robots. Perhaps nothing is more hyped by the media than the robots at CES. But the home robots seem limited in ability and a novelty likely to quickly fade after purchase. The most compelling robots serve warehouses and factories to improve efficiencies in operations.

4. AI in a chip and voice activation are everywhere, but still limited. Every technology provider links its solutions to the use of AI and thus the connectivity with either or both of Amazon’s or Google’s voice technologies. This AI is now on chips, mainly driven by NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and others. But the AI applications remain restricted, requiring high-quality data that most enterprises are not able to create yet.

5. Promising early Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI). Emerging technologies are starting to connect the human brain to machines. BrainCo, for example, developed a robotic hand controlled by the human neuro-system.

6. IoT is in everyone’s brochure. Yet, scaled use cases and ROI remain scarce.

7. Asia! The days of U.S. technology leadership are history. Many of the innovation comes out of Asia, including not only Japan but also China, Taiwan, and Korea. That’s why the focus of the industry will continue to shift across the Pacific ocean.

The implementation of new technologies remains elaborate

Adopting the right technologies for business requirements will continue to be a challenge for companies and their IT providers.

Although there are more and more options for this problem, the pace of digital change makes it difficult to test, procure and integrate each one of them appropriately.