CES 2009 is in full effect in Las Vegas. It is the biggest consumer electronics expo of the year and showcases upcoming tech products and gadgets that will be out through 2009. The big highlights so far are as follows:
– Sony unveils the world’s thinnest netbook laptop. Netbooks are smaller laptops that run in the $400-800 range and are primarily used for basic applications and accessing the internet. This new 8 inch Sony Vaio PC will be the size of a mobile phone, weigh 1.4 lb’s, and sell for about $900.
– Verizon Communications has chosen Microsoft as their search provider for all mobile phones. This comes as a blow to Google and Yahoo as Verizon is set to become the #1 mobile service provider when their merger with Alltel goes through, knocking down AT&T to #2.
– Microsoft Corp plans to let consumers test the next generation of its computer operating system, Windows 7, starting on Friday and said the new software is “absolutely on track.” Wall Street has identified the timely launch of retail sales of Windows 7 as one of the critical challenges for Microsoft this year, after Windows Vista debuted 12 to 15 months late in January 2007.
Windows 7 is “absolutely on track,” Robbie Bach, president of entertainment & devices at Microsoft, told Reuters in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday. He declined to give a specific release date beyond the beta testing on January 9, though he reiterated Microsoft’s pledge to deliver Windows 7 around three years after Vista.
– U.S. home entertainment sales fell 5.5 percent to $22.4 billion in 2008 as higher sales of Blu-ray discs helped offset a 9 percent drop in DVD sales and flat rentals, a digital trade group said on Wednesday. Sales in the mature U.S. DVD market fell 9 percent to $14.5 billion and rentals were flat at $7.5 billion
– Yahoo Inc unveiled on Wednesday a list of partners to aid its push to bring the Internet and television together, hoping their joint effort will finally connect with consumers. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Yahoo said it has forged deals with companies including Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, LG Electronics Inc, Sony Corp and Vizio, which will make high-definition TVs that support Yahoo’s online service.
The new TVs announced on Wednesday will be in the market as early as the spring and will support widgets — small Internet applications — that run alongside broadcast TV content, but not over it.
The applications can be used for a wide array of Web activities, like watching videos on Google Inc’s YouTube.com, social networking on News Corp’s MySpace.com, tracking stocks and sports teams, buying and selling on eBay, messaging friends using Twitter, or using Yahoo’s own photo-sharing website Flickr.
The widgets will allow viewers more interaction with the programs they’re watching, Yahoo said. There will also be applications based on Yahoo-branded services such as Yahoo Finance.
– SanDisk Corp unveiled a portable digital music system based on memory cards preloaded with songs, signaling a shift in its strategy to compete against the iPod.
SanDisk announced the Sansa slotRadio player and companion line of slotRadio music cards at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday, along with other products including tiny, high-capacity memory cards for mobile phones.
The music system is designed for the casual music consumer and consists of a modest-looking player — square and about as think as deck of card — that comes bundled with a fingernail-sized memory card.
The card holds 1,000 mostly classic tunes picked from Billboard magazine charts and arranged into playlists according to genre. The player and card will sell for about $100; additional cards, which may be introduced around specific genres, themes or artists, will sell for about $40.
– The least surprising news award for CES 2009, goes to the report that desktop computers are going the way of the dinosaur and becoming extinct. There are no desktop’s on Amazon’s Top 10 Best Selling Computer’s list and companies are putting more focus on faster and more affordable laptop’s. With wi-fi being available virtually everywhere, and the portability of a lightweight laptop, the need for buying a clunky desktop no longer exists.
“On both price and performance, laptops are so competitive now it’s surprising they weren’t able to catch up with desktops even earlier,” said iSuppli analyst Peter Lin. “The ability to surf the Internet wirelessly at public places, the need to be able to take your office out with you when you travel, and an increasing range of notebook computers have all led to lower desktop sales.”
Laptops posted a milestone in the third quarter of 2008, passing desktop PC sales for the first time, according to research group iSuppli.
Credit to Reuters for information
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