by Daniel Dumas
Get ready for an onslaught of the cheap. With the economy more unstable
than Plaxico Burress’ mental state, electronics manufacturers are
putting the e-brakes on their budgets, flattening their costs, and
rolling out their cheapest, most practical gadgets. You know, the ones
that people like you and me can afford.
You’ll get a glimpse of this "fashionably cheap" approach to gadgets at
the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The show, which
runs from January 6 to January 11, is the electronics industry’s
biggest North American conference. This year’s tradeshow will no doubt
feature some excessively large HDTVs, as it has in the past. It will
still attract more than 100,000 attendees, mostly members of the
electronics industry, plus a few thousand journalists, though CES attendance will be down a bit compared to last year. And it will still have its
celebrity appearances (including Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder and Akon),
paid for by companies hungry for publicity.
But behind the glitz, companies will be showing their bread and
butter for 2009: A lot of inexpensive, no frills devices designed to
perform expertly without sucking up the last remaining drops of your
severance package.
Cell Phones
Convention show speculation will invariably focus on what form the next
the iPhone will take. Be like Public Enemy; don’t believe the hype.
There are other cooler, better, and yes, more capable handsets out
there.
Shredding a path through the tangled cellular jungle is, surprise,
Palm. The company everyone thought had flatlined is taking the
defibrillator to itself with the potentially awesome Nova operating
system. The Linux based OS — which will launch at an undisclosed date
in 2009 — is being pimped as "a next-generation operating system with
much more capabilities, driven around the Internet and Web-based
applications," by Palm CEO Ed Colligan. We know it’s all marketing
hype, but Palm’s seemingly endless financial woes might be just enough
to spark a minor revolution in cell software. With the company’s
declining market share, it’s a sure bet that Nova-based Palm phones
will be cheap buys in 2009. And fans of the OG Palm OS need not fret,
both of you can still pick up a Centro for just $99 well into the New
Year.
Notebooks and Desktop PCs
Netbooks netbooks netbooks! Yes, these wee wonders have broken into the
mainstream and are now considered legit devices. Look for refreshes on
existing netbook lines from Dell, HP, Asus, and MSI. We expect one from
Sony too: We’re predicting Sony will show a fully-featured netbook,
with its trademark Vaio styling, in the $500 to $700 range.
Also expect to see a lot of all-in-one desktops that are less about
design and more about functionality. We’ve seen iMac clones like the
beautifully rendered Dell XPS One and the Gateway One before. Those
days are over. In their stead will be ugly, obtuse, yet practical
all-in-one boxes that trade a slim profile and processing power for a
sub-thousand-dollar sticker.
Televisions and Displays
The schoolyard contest of who can build the biggest TV won’t exactly
stop mid-shove. Sharp, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony will roll out some
retina-searing, 100-inch-plus LCDs, but behind the big screens there
will be more of an emphasis on screens that can deliver bang for the
buck. Third-tier manufacturers like Vizio, Westinghouse, and Sceptre
will be offering screens that have just as much resolution, color, and
calibration options as their second- and first-tier brethren. They’ll
just cost thousands less.
Miniature pocket projectors will be huge. Instead of dropping ten
thousand ducats on a 1080p home cinema caliber projector, corporate VPs
will be pocketing portables like the Toshiba Pico to project their PowerPoint
presentations on the go. We’ve already seen a chorus line of projectors
like the Pico emerge in recent months. The G-Lab crystal ball predicts
more of these handhelds at cheaper prices.
Cameras and Camcorders
A few titanic, feature-heavy SLRs (Exhibit A: Canon 5D Mark II) will
sail through CES but so will a fleet of thrifty shooters that anchor
cheap thrills by way of thoughtful touches. Look for small shooters
that incorporate printers, Wi-Fi, and web browsers.
Also gaining a deep foothold will be mini video cams like the Flip Mino
and the Kodak Zi6. Designed to upload footage to the web (alright,
basically just to YouTube), these devices record in hi-def and often
cost less than two hundred bucks. Until now they’ve been the pet
projects of borderline boutique manufacturers like Pure Digital. But
now mainstream camera companies will be rolling out their own versions
of pocket video cameras, putting still more price and feature pressure
on this category. And you know what that means: Cheaper, better
products for you and me.
Wired.com is sending a 9-person team to cover CES with news reports, photos and video. Follow all the latest news at wired.com/ces.
Photo of CES 2008 by mobil’homme/Flickr
