Enhanced Mobile Graphics

Mobile gaming is becoming a huge market opportunity for developers. And that’s largely due to enhanced mobile graphics technologies from companies like Nvidia. At CES, several devices will likely be on display showing how far mobile graphics have come over the last several months.

Android will be everywhere at CES. From smartphones to tablets to refrigerators, the sheer number of products running Android will soar at the show. But that is not surprising considering the growth Android experienced in the past couple of years. Plus Android is open source, can be freely distributed with products and applications are plentiful.

Just a couple of years ago, netbooks were all the rage at the Consumer Electronics Show. But since tablets became so popular and notebooks sizes have shrunk, netbooks as a product category have withered on the find. Don’t expect to see any new netbooks debut at CES. You might even hear of PC makers acknowledging that product category is dead.

The big issue for Windows 8 in 2012 was that the operating system was running on computers designed for Windows 7. At CES, expect a host of Windows 8 PCs to be on display as Microsoft and its hardware partners try to prove to the world that the operating system really does have a strong future in today’s computing environment.

For several years, design had been set aside in favor of functionality and cost-savings. But at this year’s CES, expect several companies to unveil products that show off entirely new design philosophies. Samsung, in fact, has been teasing a television that could be transparent. Design is the product element that some of the more innovative producers will tout at the show.

Near-field communication has been around for several years, but 2012 was when the technology really got off the ground. NFC has won wide acceptance in the past year and that increases the likelihood that NFC will find its way into significantly more products. Let’s hope so.

There’s a very real possibility that CES 2013 will be home to several new smartphones that come with screens measuring greater than 5 inches. The Samsung Galaxy S III’s 4.8-inch display has proven popular among consumers, and now, companies like HTC want to go perhaps one- or two-tenths of an inch better. Those companies can do that with 5-inch screens. And the best place to show those devices off is at CES.

Although the BlackBerry PlayBook couldn’t appeal to many enterprise customers, it’s quite possible that several PC makers, HP and Dell, will show off some slates that are designed with corporate customers in mind. The enterprise is showing a real willingness to adopt tablets, and it’s quite possible that vendors will try to satisfy that market’s desire.

Although Apple won’t be at CES, there’s an exceedingly strong chance that many of the companies at the show will try to call attention to the ways in which their products are better than Apple’s. Like it or not, Apple is the most successful and influential company in the technology industry these days. Some of Apple’s competitors will want to show they can one-up the iPhone maker. CES is the perfect place to do that.

Those who purchased a high-definition television featuring 1080p resolution will likely be upset to learn that the technology is being replaced at CES 2013. In fact, several vendors, including Samsung and LG, are expected to show off 4K TVs (known as Ultra HD) that have four times the resolution of today’s top-of-the-line sets. But expect those televisions to come with multi-thousand-dollar price tags that ensure that only more affluent consumers, or perhaps the more self-indulgent ones, will buy these new televisions.