The latest from CES: Ford embraces Apple, Google car systems

More than 1,100 Chinese companies making up more than a quarter of the 3,600 exhibitors will represent at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week.

Acton unveiled its electric skateboard – the Blink Board – at CES Monday. Check it out: we will be posting all sorts of footage, pictures, commentary, and fun stuff over the next couple of weeks but especially live from CES 2016.

Volkswagen, still in the midst of the emissions scandal, will definitely draw great attention.

Plus, intelligent electric-car startup Faraday Future will unveil its first concept vehicle at a pre-show event.

“Most companies are going to start looking increasingly to India as the new place for double-digit growth year over year”.

Samsung says the projects are still in the development phases. And we should certainly expect this to have a major impact on the corporate vehicle fleet as well.

Take Tuesday – the annual “Press Day” at CES, when some of the biggest electronics companies make their pre-show announcements – as an example.

But the Internet of Things trend is also being driven out of necessity. There is definitely a trend towards high tech.

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is a chance for the titans of tech to make a statement about what the coming year will look like.

Another notable device that may turn heads during the CES is robotic vacuum cleaner Roboking Turbo Plus, one of the CordZero vacuum cleaner product lineup, equipped with virtual reality technology.

But if my early reconnaissance is any indication, this year’s show will be about connecting connected devices to other connected devices – sometimes to the point of ridiculousness.

Meanwhile connectivity – whether through the WiFi routers we have at home or through the cell towers that surround us – is becoming ubiquitous, allowing devices to easily connect to each other and to more sophisticated computers in the cloud. The Echo, in case you’re not familiar with it, is a little WiFi-connected cylinder that can answer basic questions, tell you the weather, give you news, check stocks and TV listings, play music and podcasts from Amazon Prime, and, of course, let you add items to your Amazon shopping cart. However, as most manufacturers are betting on cloud computing, privacy groups have mixed feelings about the interconnected home of the future. “It’ll be a challenge to develop solutions to connect me with my home, without handing over sensitive data to a cloud service or others over the internet”. Ford also announced that it will support both CarPlay and Android Auto. LG has announced to present a brand new, paper-thin rollable OLED panel.

At this year’s CES, officially open from January 6-9, organizers aim to cap attendance at that level with security ramped up in the wake of last month’s attacks in California. To reflect that shift, the Consumer Electronics Association, which produces CES, recently changed its name to the Consumer Technology Association – a small but symbolic move.

“As for what sells, we won’t know that until later this year”, Baker said of the sea of offerings set to go on display.