CES - Aside from the glitz, always good to see what's hoppin' in Harbin or crankin' in Chengdu...

CES - Aside from the glitz, always good to see what’s hoppin’ in Harbin or crankin’ in Chengdu…

CES is the annual eye candy fest where companies spends gazillions of dollars showing you their version of the future. In 2012, the bleeding edgers were showing dazzling 8,000 pixel LCD displays, App Stores on phones, cars, refrigerators and TVs, “Smart TV” (or web enabled TVs), more consumer-friendly 3D TVs (especially LG) and a tablet-centric future. Side note: One of the cooler demos was this company, HzO, who waterproofs your phones and tablets with a patented film process performed during the manufacturing process (check out this quick video where they dunked an iPhone into a tank full of water while playing Lady Antebellum).

The other thing that is always worth making the Vegas trip for each year is to see what the consumer electronics manufacturers from China are touting. Usually, they take whatever has gotten popular over here and have found ways to make them in masstastic volumes and in a plethora of different shapes and sizes. So if what they’re cloning is any barometric reading as to what’s hot over there (and believe me, China literally made the market for a company I used to be a part of, C-Cube Microsystems), here’s what appears to be hoppin’ in Harbin, shippin’ in Shanghai, and on fire in Anhui:

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