14 DAY TRIAL // The year 2014 is coming to an end fast, with Christmas just a little over a week away, and the start of 2015 not long after. That means that everyone is splitting their attention between preparing for the upcoming celebrations and looking forward to the new goodies that the new year will bring.
Christmas is not what I'm concerned with today. Although I admit it's primarily because I had to make zero preparations on account of being invited to celebrate with someone else in a totally different part of the country.
The start of the New Year definitely interests me though, because products launched in preparation for Christmas shopping account for only half of companies' activities during this period.
The other half has to do with the Consumer Electronics Show, a trade show that always takes place at the start of the year in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The tradition of the Consumer Electronics Show
There are several (some might say many) international gatherings where makers of technology come together and show off their latest or upcoming successes.
They are staggered throughout the year, and in general have a focus. The Mobile World Congress takes place in Barcelona, Spain, in early March, for example, and is focused on smartphones and related mobile devices and accessories.
Computex takes place in Taipei, Taiwan, every June and is primarily centered around personal computers and hardware.
Then there are more general and grander gatherings, like IFA, which occurs every September and has everything from mobile devices and PCs to gigantic TVs and everything in between. Even unusual things like 3D printers have been known to debut there.
CES, in a way, is the IFA of the beginning of the year, since it has a similarly broad scope, though it lacks IFA's business elements.
What you can expect from CES 2015
Set to take place between January 6 and January 9, the show will welcome companies from around the world. We know for certain that LG will launch a Quantum Dot Ultra HD TV there, and that NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 960 will probably debut then as well.
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 965M and 960M mobile GPUs could show up as well (as part of laptops) and Seagate's 8 TB HDD will definitely make an appearance. WD will probably push forward something of that nature as well.
The 4K TV rave was mostly exhausted during 2014, and 3D technology had 2013 almost all to itself, so I don't see either of those becoming a focus this time around. LG's quantum dot model will be somewhat of an anomaly, most likely.
What I'm interested in seeing is if 3D printing technology has a place of honor or not. Now that there's a 3D printer even in space, it's about time something major happened. Marvell's launch of a 3D printing processor platform and its plans to release it worldwide at CES 2015 support my assumption, as do HP's overtures in this field, especially its remarkable Multi Jet Fusion machines.
Finally, I'll be keeping an eye out for any AMD and NVIDIA announcements. Now that they've really split up, it will be fun to watch the drastically different tech paths followed from here on out. Carrizo APUs? Radeon R9 390X? NVIDIA Maxwell GPUs in 16nm? All could show up at once.
