Gadget makers strut their stuff
Published 9:00 pm Monday, January 2, 2006
Do you want to catch “Saturday Night Live” on Sunday, or “Nightline” in the morning? Would you like to watch the football game in a doctor’s waiting room or 2,000 miles from home?
What if you’re suddenly in the mood for an old episode of “Dragnet” or one of last year’s hit films?
Technology makes all this “time-shifting” possible now, usually with a few button clicks. There’s just a question of who will prevail in delivering the products and services that will win over consumers and their changing couch-potato propensities with new standards of convenience and mobility.
That battle for consumer dollars and eyeballs will hit a fever pitch at the International Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off Wednesday.
The five-day annual event in Las Vegas, the mother of all tech trade shows, is bigger than ever before. It will consume 28 football fields of space as 2,500 exhibitors ranging from Internet powerhouses such as Yahoo Inc. to little-known gizmo makers cast their bets on what they hope will be the next big trends in electronics.
Judging from the latest jockeying, video is one of them.
Yahoo and rival Google Inc. will make their debuts at the show with keynote speeches, muscling their way into the high-stakes battle already begun by computing stalwarts, consumer electronics giants and telecommunications companies to push digital media deeper into homes.
With the Web poised to become an increasingly dominant distribution method for movies and television, the Internet giants, along with Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, could very well be the ABC, NBC and CBS networks of the digital age, said Tim Bajarin, an industry analyst with Creative Strategies.
“If they get it right,” Bajarin said, “Google, Yahoo and MSN will be the digital portals for video content.”
Hollywood, which is now experimenting with more online delivery services, is taking notice.
In fact, nearly 40 percent of TV network executives surveyed recently by IBM Corp.’s business consulting service said they feared major competition from Internet portals in the next five to seven years.
“The power of the Internet players, and the investments they’re making in video, is a threat in and of itself,” said Saul Berman, author of an upcoming report based on that survey and a partner in IBM’s media and entertainment consultancy.
