Analysts from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies (WSS) service are attending CES 2016, one of the most important mobile and electronic trade shows, in Las Vegas, US, this week, from Tuesday 5th to Friday 8th January, 2016.
Just like the last several years, mobile devices, such as smartphones and wearable products, continue to be an integral part of the show. We will be blogging live from the show every day.
Here are five mega trends across the mobile device industry we expect to see at CES 2016 and recommend clients / journalists focus on:
- Virtual Reality (VR) will maintain one of the hot topics this year. Oculus, Sony, Microsoft, HTC and Samsung are key players to watch. Gaming and movie will remain as the key usage cases. 2016 is set to be a huge leap forward to VR technology, but we don’t expect wide adoption to happen this year;
- Wearable products to gain more attractions, with all kinds of customized products targeting multiple segments, such as female / fashion segment, health monitoring, children security and tracking, medical industry applications, gaming, as well as smart home and smart car connection and control etc. Moreover, in addition to fitness band and smart watch, we will see more wearable products from headphones, sneakers, to dresses, rings etc. Companies worthy watching and visiting include Samsung, Sony, LG, Huawei, ZTE, Alcatel One Touch, FitBit and others;
- Rollable Display: LG Display is showcasing 18 inch rollable display today, which is a really breaking renovation. We expect to see more flexible and bendable / rollable smartphones and tablets to be available from LG and Samsung this year;
- More Chinese vendors are eyeing US market and will bring in more high-spec / affordable products this year. We expectHuawei will formally introduce Honor branded smartphones into US market. Likewise, ZTE, which is the fourth largest handset and smartphone maker in US at this moment, expects to unveil Nubia N11 smartphone this week. The other Chinese player TCL-Alcatel will also unveil Pixi 4 family smartphones. LeTV, a rising content and hardware maker in China, would also bring in some surprises this week. Taiwan-based Asus will ride and wave in unlocked smartphone market and introduce more unlocked Zenfone models in US market;
- Headphones may see some upgrades this year. Streaming music remains as one of key applications for smartphones at this stage. However, we do need a disruptive innovation in headphone products. Lightening headphones would be a starter, and we might see more sensors to be added on headphones to make it as a connected / hearable device this year.
Please stay tuned for our coming CES 2016 daily blogs.
Source: Strategy Analytics
