Nearly 200,000 Attendees Expected This Year

Along with the rest of the global macro economy, the International Consumer Electronics Show has suffered a bit in recent years, but not in 2013. Hallways were elbow-to-elbow and all the pavilions were loaded with companies showing off their wares.

The auto companies have barely gotten their 2013 models out to the showroom floors, but Ford indicated it is ahead of the pack by allowing media people to check out next year’s ultra-connected Fiesta.

Perhaps the biggest news of Day 1 at CES was the surprise unveiling of Panasonic’s 20-inch, i5-processor-powered tablet that the company envisions selling to marketing people (naturally!), architects and photographers, among others. Here it is shown next to a standard 10-inch tablet. Go to the next slide for another view and more information.

The new Panasonic king-size tablet weighs a bit more than 5 pounds, runs Windows 8 and features 8-bit true color. It should be available later this year, a spokesman told eWEEK. However, the company didn’t release pricing information or other product specifications.

Hisense, a longtime Chinese original equipment manufacturer for other brands, is now coming out with its own branded devices. Hisense USA on Jan. 7 unveiled an array of new televisions, tablets and smartphones, in addition to smart appliances and projectors. Specifically, the company introduced several new ultra high-definition televisions (UHDTV), as well as a new series of high-definition televisions with embedded Google TV.

New-generation media companies like Netflix, Pandora, Vudu and Vimeo are popping up in mainstream consumer electronics booths alongside device makers such as LG, Panasonic, Huawei, Hisense and many others. New-gen media IT meets old-school hardware.

China’s Huawei, which made its reputation as a networking and telecom technology company in recent years, is branching into the device-making business. At CES, this technology giant previewed new Window 8 and Android phones but offered no specifications about them. The company won’t even say when they will become available.

Huawei is also boldly moving into the smartphone business with new Windows 8 and Android (shown here) devices. No pricing, features or other specifications were made available. Rumors indicated that Huawei will release them by this summer. Another rumor claims these models will undercut all existing similar phones in price.

This mobile PC can be used as a laptop or as a tablet, since it sports the touch-only Windows 8 OS. The PC comes apart and is designed to serve a number of uses. HP is hoping this will ignite its laptop and tablet sales in 2013 and 2014.

It’s hard to see it in this picture, but the new wall-mountable television monitors from TCL are only 11.5 millimeters thick. If you look at the left side of the picture, you can barely make out the Razor in the prism-like presentation.

Wearable cameras and minicams are popping up in several places this year at CES. This GoPro minicam is designed for bikers, skiers or any type of mobile athlete and shoots video via cloud connection to a server or cloud storage service.

Looxcie, which should win an award just for its creative name, showed its “hat-cam” product for people who simply don’t want to miss anything that happens in their lives. Google has brought a lot of attention to this new genre of personal electronics in recent months with its Google Play lineup (which fit into eyeglasses).

If you thought these are a thing of the past, well, they’re not. They are now connected directly to services such as Pandora, Sirius radio and others and are now more colorful than ever.