There is no end in sight! That’s what mobile broadband operators tell me in the run up to 5G. All new traffic is wireless, a mix of cellular and Wi-Fi, and no one is going back to the wire. The only thing for sure is that mobile broadband gets faster, better, and cheaper. And that is the dog whistle for the never-ending drive for more data traffic.

Much like iBeacons, I have seen a lot lately on the “failure” retail apps, and how retailers should avoid them because their customers will not use them. Personally, I think this is both naïve and lacks vision on the retailer’s part. Everyone wants to do omnichannel now, so what makes you different?  It is how you engage customers through their smartphones that will differentiate your offering, not just the installation of beacons, Wi-Fi or a mobile app/web presence. A retailer who dismisses outright the possibility of a mobile app, doesn’t have the vision to see how smartphones and in-store retail technology can mark them out from their competitors.

As the bustle of CES 2016 quiets down, many mainstream media professionals are grumbling that there were little-to-no groundbreaking announcements presented on the floor. While that notion may seem apparent on the surface, ABI Research’s team of analysts conducted an in-depth, post-show investigation to recount which transformative tech trends commanded CES 2016 and explore how vendors can successfully implement those innovations in the months ahead.

CES 2016 has grown again from its noticeable presence last year.  This year brought 10 auto OEM’s, over 115 auto electronic tech companies, 25% more floor space and two OEM keynotes (GM and VW).   Auto presence was up 17% YoY (Consumer Tech Assoc.) and the press buzz was hard to miss.  The 2016 CES Innovation Awards included a Vehicle Intelligence category, won by Ford and In Vehicle Audio/Video won by Bosch. 

Samsung is closing out 2015 with a bang in Virtual Reality. After a couple iterations of developer kits (AKA Innovator Editions) for their Gear VR mobile device housing, the newest consumer-ready Gear VR seems to have found a winning recipe for VR. The right ratio of attractiveness, accessibility, and affordability have led the Gear VR to user acclaim and continuing positive press coverage. It’s not the first of its kind, and it won’t be the highest quality VR experience available (that will go the tethered VR devices like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive), but it’s relatively early market entry and balanced offering positions Gear VR as one of the first consumer-ready VR devices, poised to launch an industry that had since been relegated mostly to the tech savvy and driven by ambitious hype. The Wall Street Journal likened the situation to that of the Atari 2600 and its effect on the home console gaming market, and for good reason.

When ABI Research first started to look at the potential for BLE Beacons in retail, Groupon stood out as a very obvious candidate. Its business model is based on the ability for consumers to discover heavily discounted offers nearby, with the ability for instant gratification. The problem was that the location range was too wide, the choice of offers too broad/untargeted and the time between buying and redeeming a deal meant that instant gratification was somewhat lost. From the retailer perspective, the selling point was the ability to attract new customers. The reality was price sensitive consumers loyal to offers not stores, leading to the emergence of a very derogatory term for coupon users in restaurant circles (don’t worry, we all used them).

ABI Research has been covering 802.11ac and 802.11ad (WiGig) for about 6 or 7 years now.  These standards started to take off commercially a few years ago.  802.11ac is much more complex than previous standards, so it was broken up into two waves of certification by the Wi-Fi Alliance.  This made sense to ease the Wi-Fi ecosystem into 802.11ac.  802.11n had introduced the option to use the 5 GHz band in addition to the 2.4 GHz band, and introduced MIMO.  MIMO allows Wi-Fi to use the way radio waves naturally bounce around to add more data streams that increase speed and range.  802.11ac only uses the 5 GHz band, and Wave 1 pushed the Wi-Fi ecosystem much faster into the 5 GHz band.  We are already past the point where most of the shipping products with Wi-Fi support both bands.

I’ll be attending SCTE this year, and there are a few topics that we expect will be heavily covered at the event, reflecting some of the more influential trends in the TV markets today. The standard topics will be covered as usual, including B2B Solutions, Next-generation services (i.e. cloud), Wireless networks, and Wired networks, and how the many facets of video delivery and consumption factor in. More specifically, some of the biggest topics of the show we expect will be: