This year, the consumer-electronics show features 4,500 companies exhibiting products and services, and more than 180,000 people are expected to attend.
Major companies including Samsung, LG, Sony, and Panasonic once again held nothing back, with sprawling booths featuring wall-to-wall displays.
Virtual reality remains an ever-present force at the annual tech show, and startups and established tech giants alike have unveiled everything from utilitarian apps to splashy devices.
IBM showed off its latest collaborative efforts as well, and unveiled its voice-controlled autonomous pod with Aurrigo Tech.
As usual, LG showed off its screens in a stunning visual display that took over an entire room – this time with roughly 265 screens.
‘It’s phenomenal,’ an LG exhibitor told Dailymail.com. I can’t do the math but at 1080p, it’s likely worth just under a million dollars.’
And, the breathtaking ‘transparent OLED’ is available in the consumer market.
‘Think of it as a window that can turn on and show movies,’ the LG team told Dailymail.com at CES. ‘We’ve got so much coolness going on.’
‘The greatest technology in the industry right now is OLED.’
Several other companies celebrated their first year exhibiting breakout technologies at the massive international tech show.
Royole unveiled its FlexPai smartphone in a media preview this week, and officially demonstrated its devices on the show floor on Tuesday.
This included a purse with the flexible display built right into its top flap.
Consumer goods giant P&G, best known for Pampers diapers and Tide detergent, is showcasing heated razors, a toothbrush with artificial intelligence and a wand-like device that scans the skin and releases serum to cover up age spots and other discoloration.
P&G is also showing off an internet-connected scalp adviser: The Head & Shoulders-branded device uses ultraviolet light and other techniques to uncover scalp issues and recommend products.
The device is available only in Europe and Asia for now.
Expect these gizmos to cost more than the plain-old ‘dumb’ versions. P&G’s Oral-B toothbrush, for example, is expected to cost $279, while a regular Oral-B electric toothbrush can be had for less than $30.
And every new connected device means more data collection about people’s personal habits – a gold mine for advertisers and hackers alike.
The North Face is using virtual reality to provide a fine-grained look at its waterproof fabrics.
Raytheon is demonstrating the everyday applications of GPS anti-jam technology, which was originally designed to protect military forces.
And John Deere has hauled in self-driving tractors and a 20-ton combine harvester aided by artificial intelligence.
The combine has cameras with computer-vision technology to track the quality of grain coming into the machine so that its kernel-separating settings can be adjusted automatically. Farmers can monitor it remotely using a smartphone app.
It’s hard to imagine what 19th century Illinois blacksmith John Deere might think if he were plopped into his company’s 2019 booth at the flashy Vegas convention center, but Deanna Kovar believes he’d be ‘amazed and astonished.’
‘His innovation was making a self-powering steel plow that could cut through the heavy, rich soils of the Midwest,’ said Kovar, the company’s director of production and precision agriculture marketing.
‘We’ve been a technology company since the start.’
Kovar said American farmers have been using self-driving tractors for decades – and CES is a chance to let everyone else know.
Chatterjee said such messages are directed not just at a company’s customers, but to investors, potential corporate partners, startup acquisition targets and the technically skilled employees these more traditional firms are hoping to attract.
‘These are brands that are aggressively looking to work tech into their DNA,’ Chatterjee said.
‘They want to be perceived all around as a tech-forward innovative brand.’
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