CES Asia Growing, Now Includes 30 Exhibitors on 5G
SHANGHAI -- Hopes to expand CES Asia annually materialized for CTA, we found at CES Asia last week. It covered 20 tech categories in five halls of the 17-building Shanghai New International Expo Centre, compared with one-and-a-half halls at the inaugural event in 2015. Exhibitor count this year is 500 vs. some 200 in 2015, and exhibitor space was 50,000 gross square meters, vs. 20,000, said CTA.
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Categories covered in 2015 included smart home, wearables, home entertainment, TVs, robots, drones, 3D printing, software, mobile devices, content and gaming. This year added 5G connectivity, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, vehicle technology and IoT. Thirty exhibitors showed products for 5G, and exhibits represented “every major emerging industry” in consumer tech, said Karen Chupka, CTA executive vice president, in a news briefing.
Huawei featured 5G and had a major presence, touting photographic and design prowess of its flagship smartphones. It had a display at the Kerry Hotel with photos shot with Huawei phones. Its booth highlighted its P20 Pro smartphone as a camera first, featuring AI stabilization and the first Leica Triple Camera with a 40-megapixel RGB lens, 20-megapixel mono lens and 8-megapixel telephoto lens. It also spotlighted a Porsche-designed Mate RS smartphone.
On our walk of the floor, we saw a large number of robots in a range of shapes and sizes. At the GT Robot booth, a spokeswoman showed us GT Wonder Boy, a 9.3-inch-tall robot billed as a “social bot companion.” Wonder Boy is selling in its native Singapore and can translate 14 languages, the spokeswoman said. User interfaces include voice and a touchscreen on an integrated smartphone display. Features include 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
XG Robotics showed Puppy Cube, a tabletop projector designed to compete with Sony’s Xperia Touch, which turns a surface into a touch-capable Android device. Attendees selected apps from an Android home screen. The projector is designed for family game play on a nonreflective table, among many uses, Sales Vice President Jackie Tang told us.
The Harman by Samsung booth highlighted a far-field voice input technology for smart speakers, introduced here last year. Harman projects the market for devices with voice input capability to exceed $7 billion by 2024.
CTA CEO Gary Shapiro differentiated this show from CES in Las Vegas, saying the Shanghai show is “curated.” By contrast, he said, “In Las Vegas, if you’re in consumer technology and you sign up timely and choose your space and pay, you’re in.” That results in “a lot of companies that make smartphone cases.”