If you’ve ever attended CES, you know it’s a zoo. The official numbers haven’t been released yet for this year, but to me (and most everyone I talked to), 2015 felt even busier and more crowded than past years. Last year was itself a circus with more than 160,000 attendees from 140+ countries, wading through 2 million square feet of exhibit space taken up by nearly 4,000 exhibitors.
And those are just the official numbers. Throw in the ancillary events and meetings, all the corporate suites at the Venetian, Aria, Bellagio, Caesar’s, as well as concurrent shows, such as the AT&T Developer’s Summit, and who knows how many people, exactly, poured into Vegas? Let’s just say it was enough that the taxi lines were always long, the wait for a table at a good steakhouse on the strip even longer, and the number of PR people clogging my inbox with product pitches was longer still.
This year, I went to CES with one main goal: to meet with cool startups to cover here on Startup50 and to vet for my startup roundups for CIO, Network World and other publications.
Because, make no mistake about it, startups are slowly but surely stealing the show at CES.
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A few years ago, Eureka Park, where most of the startups are located, was an interesting mix of aspirational science projects with no hope of ever getting anything other than friends-and-family funding and half-baked startup ideas that maybe could get a little momentum on Kickstarter. Sprinkled in here and there were a few viable business ideas.
This year, that recipe has flipped — dramatically. Most of the startups at CES had already developed fully functional MVPs or prototypes (many from successful Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns), and the majority at least claimed they were deep in talks to raise their Series As or Bs, and didn’t give me any reason to doubt their claims.
While many of the startups at CES 2015 will most likely be single-product acquisition plays, such as cool wireless headsets or smart watches or DIY home security kits that will fit best in an established company’s product line, I expect to see plenty others migrating to the main hall in coming years, staking their claims among the Samsungs, Mercedes, and LGs of the world.
The two-faced smartphone
Startups at CES 2015 rolled out everything from advanced 3D printers to cutting-edge wearables to a slew of connected home and virtual reality gear.
One of my favorites was from Yota Devices, a Russian-based startup founded in 2009, which exhibited at this year’s ShowStoppers event. The YOTAPHONE 2 is an Android-based phone with two screens, the screen on the back being a low-power e-paper display from eInk that will be familiar to owners of the Kindle Paperwhite.
The point here is that fancy full-color displays kill battery life. Yet, for much of what we do on our smartphones – texting, reading emails, checking the time or weather, looking up things on Wikipedia to win bar bets – those screens are overkill. So, when you don’t need full color and video, simply flip your phone over and rely on the black and white version – and using this alone can deliver up to 100 hours on a single charge.
The phone is currently available in the UK, Finland, Germany, and Singapore. It will be coming soon to the U.S., Canada, and China.
The robots (and drones and self-driving cars) are coming
Cars that drive themselves, drones that follow you wherever you go, kitchen appliances that cook you dinner – the future where robots do more than simply sweep your floors is arriving soon.
Two of the more interesting robots at the show were not from startups but old-school incumbents. Toshiba displayed a creepy proof-of concept robot that, as far as I can tell, does little more reinforce the uncanny valley theory.
Toshiba’s Communications Android looks like a Japanese woman and like a robot from a 1950s Sci-Fi movie. It basically just spits out pre-programmed messages and has the ability to show a few facial expressions that are vaguely human, I suppose.
(Check out the robots I liked at CES 2014 in my article for Wired Innovations Insights.)
Latvian startup AirDog, which was founded in 2014, was also at the ShowStoppers event, showing off its extreme sports filming drone. AirDog is, in essence, your aerial videographer. After you strap the AirLeash tracker device on your wrist or helmet, the drone will follow you wherever you go.
Before you plummet down the slalom course or barrel down that steep mountain bike trail, you can play director and preprogram a variety of shots and effects, such as close ups and pans, from your smartphone. The drone supports Sony and GoPro cameras and folds down small enough to fit in your backpack, so you don’t waste battery life between runs.
My favorite robot of CES, however, was the Mercedes F 015 self-driving concept car. Sleek and with lines that scream speed, the car features swiveling front seats, so you can chat with backseat passengers while you aren’t driving, as well as 6 hi-resolutions, touch-screen video displays, so you can watch something other than the world going by.
However, the car that impressed me the most was not a self-driving or even an electric vehicle, but a three-cylinder, gas-powered smart car. The Elio from Elio Motors is two-seat smart car that gets up to 84 MPG and retails for $6,800. The company purchased a former GM plant in Shreveport, LA and has already signed Pep Boys up to service the vehicle.
Wearables and Virtual Reality start to mature
Two startups at CES scored themselves flashy Central Hall booth space through their relationships with Intel and Samsung.
In the Intel booth, AltspaceVR, a startup backed by Google Ventures and Dolby, was showing off an Intel-powered virtual reality platform that in this particular demonstration pitted four people against one another in a beach volleyball game.
The movements were clunky and the avatars were, let’s just say, retro Wii-like, but the virtual environment itself, the beach, the castle-like resort behind it, and the crag-encircled bay were all incredibly detailed and rich. Virtual reality still has a ways to go, but it’s getting there, and AltspaceVR is tackling a few obstacles other VR companies aren’t paying attention to.
AltspaceVR’s goal is to push past the gaming market, where most VR development is focused, in order to bring VR to general consumers, allowing them to watch movies, play games, and socialize with anybody in the world in a virtual space.
In the Samsung booth, Santa Monica-based FocusMotion demonstrated its motion recognition system for fitness wearables. Connected to a Samsung Gear watch and S5 smartphone, a FocusMotion employee ran through a few simple exercises – push-ups, curls, stationary bike – and the FocusMotion app tracked the workout and provided feedback on form and intensity level.
FocusMotion’s system can integrate with a range of wearable devices to detect, track, and map human movements on a per-exercise, per-repetition level. The FocusMotion SDK allows fitness software companies and hardware manufacturers to better understand the specific movements and activities that users are doing, how many times they’ve performed them, and how the exercises affected them.
Consider it a personal trainer in your pocket (and on your wrist).
There were plenty of other worthy startups meriting coverage, and you’ll see them popping up here on Startup50 in the next few weeks. But for now, this should at least give you a taste of what several cool startups were showcasing at CES 2015.
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