CES 2012 is the year the whole industry goes on a diet. Intel is pushing Ultrabooks hard, its answer to the MacBook Air, and every PC maker shows up with something thin, light, and wrapped in aluminum. The message is not subtle: heft is out, portability is the new premium.
Quad cores and OLED dreams
In mobile, Nvidia counters with the quad-core Tegra 3, because if two cores were the story last year, four cores have to be the headline this year. The TVs are the real eye candy, with LG and Samsung showing 55-inch OLED panels so thin and vivid they look like film props. They also cost more than a car, so do not get attached just yet.
The trend for the year ahead
Thin-and-light becomes the arms race on laptops and phones at once, and OLED becomes the screen everyone wants and almost nobody can afford. Expect a year of chasing both, with the prices slowly, painfully coming down.
Ultrabooks are Intel trying to will a category into existence, and I am not sure anyone asked for the name. But the thinner, lighter direction is right. The OLED TVs are the things I actually want to take home, price be damned.
Part of 20 Years of CES Through My Lens, my year-by-year diary of the show.