Amidst all the door-buster sales, advertising supplements, and 10 best gadget lists, there's one detail the makers of consumer electronics don't want you to know: The products that will render your holiday purchases obsolete are just around the corner.
Mere days after Christmas comes the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and the week after that, the MacWorld Expo is held in San Francisco.
The consumer electronics industry fuels its growth not only by introducing new technologies, but by persuading you to ditch perfectly good products for Version 2.0. The Consumer Electronics Association, which organizes the Consumer Electronics Show, expects the US-based segment of the consumer electronics industry to hit $160 billion in revenues this year. And in no industry do fresh products become has-beens so quickly - except perhaps for sushi.
But while thousands of new and improved products will debut at the Consumer Electronics Show on Jan. 7 and MacWorld, Apple's major trade show on Jan. 14, talking about them in advance could cause consumers to put off purchases, holding out for the next generation of a products, and the promise of longer battery life, higher resolution, or a less-painful price tag.
So when I tried to talk to Boston's consumer electronics companies about what they have planned for early 2008, many demurred. "My head of marketing told me not to talk about what we're showing at CES," Ambient Devices founder David Rose told me. Separately, Bruce Lampert, vice president of sales at Myvu Corporation in Westwood, explains that the retailers who attend CES want to feel that they're seeing new products first.
Ambient Devices recently installed a consumer electronics veteran as its chief executive: Carl Yankowski, former president of Sony Electronics and CEO of Palm Inc. The Cambridge company makes small information displays that receive wireless updates about weather forecasts or sports scores. Rose hints that future products may supply information about sports other than football and baseball, or details about commuting conditions.
A product called the Energy Joule, which had a pilot test this year, could be rolled out more widely in 2008, Rose says. When plugged into a wall, it can communicate with a home's electric meter, offering information about current electricity prices and energy usage. The idea, Rose explains, is to encourage conservation and avoid summer brown-outs. When the Joule glows red, meaning that prices are high, an individual might decide to wait to run several loads of laundry. Rose expects the product to sell for under $50.
Meanwhile, Myvu makes a line of "personal media viewers," which resemble eyeglasses RoboCop might wear. They plug into a device like an iPod and allow the viewer to watch video on a built-in display, mimicking a big screen experience. The most inexpensive viewer is $199, but Lampert suggests the company may soon introduce a lower-priced product. At CES, he says, the company will introduce next-generation products "that involve more mass appeal, and have higher resolution," he says.
Myvu worked with a "world-famous industrial designer" on one of the products it will unveil at CES, according to Lampert.
Hudson-based Radiospire Networks will be unveiling a new "home theater hub" at CES. Co-founder Tandhoni Rao explains that the hub will allow consumers to connect several high-definition devices, like a DVD player or set-top box, and send the signal wirelessly to a high-definition TV in the same room without punching holes into walls or running cables. The price for the hub hasn't been set.
Companies that don't yet have products on the market are much more willing to talk about their plans for CES. ZINK Imaging Inc. a spin-out from Polaroid Corp., has developed an inkless printing process that allows small handheld printers to spit out full-color photographs; the company plans to make a special paper that, when exposed to heat, changes color. CEO Wendy Caswell expects ZINK partners like Polaroid to begin selling printers next year for $100 to $200, and ZINK will sell paper for 20 to 30 cents a sheet. "We'll have actual engineering prototypes of the printers at the Polaroid booth at CES," Caswell says.
Another company that will be showing printing technology at CES is AirPrint Networks, based in Waltham. AirPrint will have a hotel suite at CES to show off a small, handheld black-and-white printer that can communicate with a mobile phone via Bluetooth wireless link. (There are some portable printers on the market already, but this one is specifically designed to work with cellphones and a subscription service that will provide content.)
AirPrint CEO Mark Thirman imagines that consumers will use the printers to print out movie tickets, coupons, and maps while they're away from home.
The first printer will be available in early 2008, Thirman says, at about $100. But users will need to pay for a subscription service, at $3 to $4 a month, and also replenish the paper at about 10 cents per sheet.
At least one key local industry player won't be at CES. Framingham-based Bose Corp. is by far the region's biggest maker of consumer electronics. But Bose doesn't exhibit at CES and doesn't release new products in tandem with the show.
Len Kawell says that the one-two punch of holiday gadget hawking followed by two big industry trade shows isn't necessarily a tech conspiracy.
"CES happens early in the year so that retailers can place their orders, and manufacturers can get the product out onto shelves by the back-to-school season," says Kawell, CEO of Pepper Computer Inc., a Lexington company that designs tablet-style computers and related software.
Scott Kirsner can be reached at kirsner@pobox.com.
