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CES 2017
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from Panasonic, but there are relatively few
models at retail. Sony chose CES 2017
to reveal its OLED ambitions with 55, 65
and 77 inch models. LG revealed a new
range of OLED sets for 2017 including the
Wallpaper TV. This was one of the most
admired and talked about products at CES,
not just due to its picture quality but also
to its thin design. Panasonic showed 2017
OLED models. Samsung with around 30%
share of the TV market worldwide is the last
big player not to have introduced OLED into
its line-up,” said Wetherill.
He added that there was more focus
on design to differentiate products, notably
the $8,000 LG Wallpaper TV. This superthin
(3.5mm) display lies flush against the wall,
with electronics and sound technology in a
soundbar. Samsung has adopted a similar
approach with the electronics for one of its
TVs housed in a separate box. Today, the
two parts of these TVs are connected by
an almost invisible cable; in the future the
connection could be wireless.
AUDIO
In the audio market, Futuresource singled
out the $13 billion worldwide headphone
market in which the accent was very
much on wireless and voice control. This,
suggests Wetherill, is in part due to the
removal of the headphone jack from the
iPhone 7.
Last year one in five headsets sold were
wireless; Futuresource expects this to rise
to nearer 30% this year, with total wireless
headset sales rising from 76 million in
2016 to 104 million in 2017.
SMART HOME
Smart technology is a big focus for
appliance vendors and CES 2017 featured
a vast array of smart home products, many
of them speculative and unproven in the
market, such as smart toasters and frying
pans. Others are more useful, such as baby
monitors that can be linked to a smart TV
or fridges with internal cameras that can be
viewed remotely. BOSCH said its whole range
will be connected (or connectable) by 2020.
According to the
Futuresource Smart
Home Trade Value Share 2016
, the smart
home market is currently dominated by
security and energy-saving products,
including: smart home systems (27%
share); home IP cameras (23%); smart
locks (19%); smart thermostats (12%);
and smart smoke detectors (5%).
With both Samsung and LG launching
voice-controlled fridges, Wetherill points
out that voice is increasingly being used to
control the smart home.
“We counted 70 or more announcements
from Alexa, Siri and Google-related products.
Many were keen to show off Alexa-related
products, piggy-backing off Amazon’s
success, for example smart power solutions
and smart light switches. Apple Home
Kit was popular with many, Google Home
Integration returned more as an up-coming
solution and Samsung included its own
S Voice technology in a fridge.”
Wetherill added: “The future is still going
to be one of multiple standards. While the
brands involved in the smart home market
are fragmented, the focus is on making
all these device interoperable. The talk at
CES was less about competing wireless
networking standards than about how to
ensure these products communicated on
the right platform. We think we will see a
multi-standard future.”
WEARABLES
In contrast to the smart home, wearables
were relatively low-key, with fewer
announcements or technical innovations.
Simon Bryant suggests that the lack of
significant launches from leading players
such as Fitbit or Garmin reflected last
year’s slow market for wearables and a
more gradual development of the sector.
“Activity tracking is a commodity feature
you see across many different types of
wearable and mobile device. Vendors
are really focusing on how to use that
information in a service-driven proposition,
in terms of coaching, in terms of benefiting
from the community of users improving
the apps and so on. Ultimately, these are
evolutionary improvements to what we see
in the space.”
very intense. We have noted a real advance
since last year in terms of expectations and
commitment to get autonomous vehicles
on the road. We have seen an advancement
of four to five years in the last year. We
expect the first autonomous vehicles to
reach the road in 2019-20. This is a jump
of four to five years on what people were
saying last year,” explained Bryant.
Futuresource expects 10% of cars to be
autonomous by 2030, with numbers rising
very quickly after that.
Jack Wetherill, Futuresource Consulting
senior market analyst, expanded on
these themes in an overview of the key
product trends in vision, audio, the smart
home and wearables. With most of the
key Virtual Reality product launches
having taken place in October, he said
there was not much of note to report in
this area.
VISION
With an expected trade value of $94 billion
in 2017, TV and video are still a major
focus for vendors like LG, Samsung and
Sony, with HDR (High Dynamic Range)
becoming a dominant feature and 4K
picture quality now a given; 8K models
were on show, too, though Futuresource
expects them to be a niche product for
the Chinese and Japanese markets in the
build-up to the Olympics.
“One thing we did see was OLED
displays, generally considered to be the
best TV technology, take further steps into
the limelight. OLED has been pioneered
by the second largest TV vendor, LG, which
has around 13-15% of the market for TVs,
and there has been some global activity
We haven’t seen
smart glasses
similar to Google
Glass come back,
but we are seeing
application-
specific devices
...continued
Product Developments
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