Slimline look is in as fewer visit electronics show

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW 2009:THERE'S NOTHING quite like souring consumer sentiment to focus the mind of an industry that relies on discretionary spending. New digital music player or mortgage payments – you decide.

As a result, last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a lot more grounded than 2008, when Panasonic’s 150in plasma TV was the talk of the show. In fact the home theatre section in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Centre, where systems with five-figure price tags were the order of the day, had the air of a ghost town for most of the show.

Instead, feature-rich mobile phones, as well as applications to run on them, web-enabled camcorders, lightweight but low-cost netbooks and other products for $500 or less, attracted all the attention.

Smartphone maker Palm made possibly the biggest splash at CES, and picked up the coveted CNet Best in Show award, with the launch of its new Pre smartphone.

It is a touchscreen model with slide-out keyboard which some commentators have dubbed an iPhone killer. Available in the US in the first half of the year, it is the first Palm phone to run the firm’s new Web OS, rather than Microsoft’s Windows Mobile.

More importantly for the struggling firm – which includes Bono’s private equity fund as an investor – the announcement of the Pre drove the firm’s share price up 34 per cent to $5.94.

Although media coverage would suggest that the iPhone is the only smartphone in town, Blackberry maker Research in Motion and its partners showed some interesting new software for the business person’s mobile of choice. Most surprising was the release by Slacker of a version of its personal radio app for BlackBerry, which allows you listen to customised digital radio stations, a full week before its release for the iPhone.

Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and LG all showed phones with high-end cameras and digital music players as standard. Features such as smile- and face-detection, once only available on high-end digital cameras, will be standard on the next crop of mobiles. In fact, using the LG Renoir, a touchscreen mobile with 8-megapixel camera, it was easy to forget this was primarily a phone with a camera, not vice versa.

Gigabytes of storage and new interfaces mean these phones can eliminate the need to carry a separate music player, without having to sign up for an iPhone data plan.

Even venerable Cisco, the company whose high-end networking kit enabled the internet explosion of the last 10 years, turned its face towards the consumer at CES. The most interesting product unveiled at its press conference on the theme of “the connected life” was a wireless audio system from its Linksys subsidiary which allows digital music to be wirelessly piped throughout the home.

Although Microsoft’s imposing stand inside the entrance to the main hall featured everything from Zune media players (still US- only) to in-car “infotainment”, the big news was that Windows 7 is now available for public beta testing. First looks suggest it will boot quicker, improve notebook battery life, cut down on Vista’s annoying security alerts and make home networking a piece of cake.

Fellow tech behemoth Intel’s presence was equally varied – from the forthcoming Monsters vs Aliens Dreamworks movie (rendered in 3D from the ground up thanks to Intel chips) to enhancements to WiFi.

Intel also introduced a new design of its Classmate PCs for schools which are designed to put ultra mobile notebooks in the hands of as many students as possible. Designed by Intel based on its research in the sector but built by third parties, the latest version is a rugged notebook with a touchscreen that can swivel, a built-in camera, a handle for easy mobility and a range of wireless networking options.

Although massive TVs with massive price tags were out of favour, there was still some pointers to where the humble box in the corner is evolving.

Super-skinny, super bright television screens based on organic light emitting diode (OLED) technology were demonstrated by Sony, Samsung and Panasonic, to name but a few.

These screens are literally millimetres thick are evolving in new directions such as the tiny flexible screen shown by Sony to the opaque model from Samsung that could be mounted on a car windscreen for navigation. Most of the same companies were also showing how the internet is being integrated with broadcast TV – primarily through widgets that allow you pull the information you want from the web to your TV screen.

By the end of the four-day conference, exhibitors said attendance may have been down by as much as 30 per cent on 2008.

In advance organisers said numbers would be down to 130,000 from a high of 140,000 but regular attendees say that the availability of taxis and hotel rooms in Las Vegas last week suggest it was lower than this. With so much invested in the next generation of products, the tech industry will be hoping CES attendance does not provide an accurate forecast of this year’s sales figures.