Amazon does not have much of a booth at CES 2017, and somehow it still wins the entire show. Alexa is everywhere. Its voice assistant turns up baked into fridges, cars, lamps, speakers, and a hundred gadgets that did not need a voice assistant, and you can feel a land-grab happening in real time. Whoever owns the assistant owns the way people talk to their tech.
Faraday’s big moment
Faraday Future is back, and this time it actually reveals a car, the FF91. It races a Tesla on stage to make the point, then stumbles through a self-parking demo that does not quite work, which is very on brand for this company. Qualcomm, meanwhile, ships the Snapdragon 835, the first 10-nanometer mobile chip, smaller and more efficient than anything before it.
The trend for the year ahead
Voice becomes the new interface, and an AI assistant becomes the thing every company suddenly has to have. Expect Amazon and Google to spend the year fighting for the inside of your home.
Alexa in everything is impressive and a little absurd. I do not need a voice assistant in my microwave. But the strategic logic is real, and the company that becomes the default voice in your house gets a serious head start on whatever comes next.
Part of 20 Years of CES Through My Lens, my year-by-year diary of the show.