CES 2012: Mindshare Conference Review
By Ricky Chopra, January 2012
This year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas attracted over 150,000 industry professionals, eager to see what over 2,700 technology companies had to offer.
So if you were not at the show this year, here’s a quick overview.
Mindshare were able to obtain three very unique perspectives on this year's Consumer Electronics Show. Irwin Gotleib, the global CEO of GroupM, provided the first of these unique perspectives. Irwin led Mindshare's staff and attending clients through a fascinating floor tour, complete with commentary on all key highlights of the show. His unique perspective provided a deep and uncanny knowledge of the devices with a long history of media expertise.
The second perspective came from CNET's editor Brian Cooley, who gave Mindshare a sneak peak at this year's best "Best in Show‟ nominees. We were privileged to have this private viewing, and a truly unique opportunity to engage with Brian. He provided us with a fascinating take on why technologies win or lose in this fast developing device landscape.
The third perspective came from a "Made-for-Mindshare‟ breakfast with over 50 of the industry's top bloggers. This provided us with a rare opportunity to engage with key opinion makers from sites such as Federated Media, Venture Beat, The Next Web, Cult of Mac, The Wire Cutter, and Anandtech.
Bloggers are vital in our digital world. The overwhelming amount of information available online has created a demand for content curators. These bloggers filter a huge amount of content and provide a unique perspective on the digital landscape.
We were able to probe the bloggers on many relevant topics. Several key themes emerged. One primary theme was the importance of mobile and in particular the current race between various operating systems, including the new Windows OS. Controversially, the opinion in the room was that Metro might be a strong contender to challenge the well-established players.
Another key theme was the continued raging debate over apps vs. the Web. The consensus seems to be that brands need to provide the information their customer‟s desire via any and all devices consumers are using. Currently the best way to do this is via Web Standards technologies. The game changer is how do you alert consumers to the fact there is new content. Windows looked to have solved this with their Metro Tiles.
Similar to last year the connected house continues to be the most hotly contested area. However, with multiple companies fighting for consumer attention arguably those that can deliver an integrated and connected ecosystem will prevail. In fact, much of the conference's rumour mill was fixated on a brand notably absent in Vegas: Apple. However, even with Apple there's plenty of opportunity, and with prices going down and the range of compelling connected devices going up look for greater consumer adoption.
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