Good morning, CES attendees!
Welcome to this special edition of the Quartz Daily Brief for CES, the world’s largest consumer electronics trade show. Nearly 200,000 people are expected to descend upon Las Vegas to catch a glimpse of the latest in consumer technology and maybe try their luck at the casinos.
Your Quartz reporters on the ground this week are Ashley Rodriguez, Dave Gershgorn, and Mike Murphy. Ashley will be covering all things digital media and streaming, while Mike and Dave will be looking out for the best of the new gadgets and robotics. You can follow us on Twitter or check out our curated page on qz.com with all our stories from CES.
This is Quartz’ fourth year covering CES, and we’re starting to notice some trends (Mike, thoughtfully, listed them for you). CES isn’t just about all-new products: Many of the startups in Vegas this week are returning with second- or third-generation updates to gadgets that weren’t quite ready for the market in 2018, or have tweaked their prototypes to live up to hype. Take CES favorite Foldimate, a laundry folding robot.
Last year, Foldimate came up short in its promise to take over all your folding duties—it was too finicky to handle some categories of clothing. This year, however, The Verge reports that it actually works as advertised. Expect more refinements from other companies as well.
The show floor opens today (Tuesday, Jan. 8), so tomorrow’s newsletter should feature many weird and wonderful gadgets.
The weather in Las Vegas is expected to be partly cloudy, with high temperatures in the upper 50s Fahrenheit, and low temperatures hovering around 40 degrees. But who are you kidding? You’ll be inside all day. (Hopefully the lights don’t go out like last year.)
If you’re staying on the Strip, give yourself ample time to get to the convention centers, as taxis, ride-sharing services, and the city’s monorail are all likely to be packed with thousands of people going to the same places. If you’re hitting the show floors, wear comfy shoes (those miles creep up on you) and bring a spare battery pack or two. Also pack a cereal bar and some water if you can. Good luck and enjoy!
Setting the scene
Today is the official start of CES, but some companies jump the gun to try to set themselves apart by holding press conferences early.
Nvidia kicked off the show Sunday night with a keynote speech from CEO Jensen Huang, announcing a new graphics card optimized for video games. A day later, the company unveiled the next generation of its autonomous driving hardware and software.
LG shows up big for CES every year with a fresh roster of TVs, refrigerators, washer/dryer combos, and robots. Its chief technical officer and president, I.P. Park, spoke last night about the big role artificial intelligence and robotics will play in the future of the company’s products.
The show floor is split between two main locations: The Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) and the Sands Expo, which connects to the Venetian and Palazzo hotels. We always like to check out Eureka Park, where you can find the earliest-stage startups, which tend to produce some of the most out-there ideas. It’s located in the bottom floor of the Sands. We also typically just visit one location a day, as traffic is horrific once the floors open. Many of the media companies will have suites at the Aria.
What to watch for today
It’s showtime. The LVCC and Sands show floors both open at 10am, but if you’re interested in hearing the first keynote addresses, make sure to get up and out far earlier. About that…
Keynotes galore. The parade of C-suite speakers continues today, with an opening keynote from IBM CEO Ginny Rometty at 8:30am in the Palazzo Ballroom in the Venetian, preceded by Gary Shapiro and Karen Chukpa of the Consumer Technology Association, the group behind CES. At 4pm, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg takes the same stage to talk about 5G.
Advertising veteran Martin Sorrell is in town. He’s repping marketing venture S4 Capital, which he set up after leaving advertising behemoth WPP last year amid allegations of personal misconduct. He’ll be speaking on a panel with S4 Capital’s recently acquired digital marketing subsidiaries, MediaMonks and MightyHive, at 12:45pm.
Party planner
The official CES kick-off. The opening party hosted by the CTA, open to all CES attendees, takes place tonight at the Omnia nightclub in Caesar Palace. The event starts at 10pm and there’s an open bar for the first hour. Bring your business cards and dancing shoes.
MediaLink, known as one of the “fixers” of CES, held its annual opening-night blow out on Monday. The party at the poolside XS Nightclub at the Wynn Encore is one of the most sought-after tickets of CES, where media and tech executives schmooze outside of meetings at the conference.
What everyone is talking about
Alexa and Assistant battle it out. Both Amazon and Google released vague numbers about the popularity of their respective virtual assistants. Amazon told The Verge that over 100 million devices with Alexa built in have been sold, but it wasn’t clear how many of those were Amazon-built products. Not to be outdone, Google said it expects its Assistant to be available on a whopping 1 billion devices before the end of the month—but, again, countless other products can run Google Assistant. There was also a massive billboard for Google Assistant up on the middle of the Strip.
Oh hi, Apple. The world’s leading consumer electronics company doesn’t tend to grace the convention, but times may be changing. Amid a rare rough patch, Apple is playing nice with longtime frenemy Samsung and others like LG, Vizio and Sony, bringing iTunes and its services to competitor products for the first time. A giant Apple ad has also been spotted on the Strip, seemingly taking aim at privacy and security concerns affecting gadget competitors like Google. But Apple’s choice of phrasing—playing off of the “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” adage—has a problematic past, and glosses over Apple’s own security breaches.
The all-screen car. Each CES seems to feature a flashy new car company that disappears a year later (remember Faraday Future?). This year, Byton looks like the prime candidate. The Tencent- and Foxconn-backed Chinese automaker has been showing off concept cars for a few years, but on Sunday night it detailed its latest vehicle, the M-Byte. The battery-powered SUV’s standout feature is the sheer number of screens all over the car, including one in the middle of the steering wheel, and a massive 48-inch one across the dashboard. The vehicle is said to go on sale in China in June, and Europe in 2020.
The Impossible 2.0. On Monday, food-tech company Impossible Foods unveiled a new recipe for its plant-based burgers that bleed and cook-to-temperature like animal meat. The press event at Mandalay Bay’s Border Grill featured sliders, tacos, empanadas, meatballs, and other dishes using the Impossible meat. The new formula, which is gluten free and has less fat than the original recipe, is designed to be cooked like ground beef, while retaining its texture and juiciness. It rolls out in select US restaurants starting today and is slated to hit some US grocery stores for the first time later this year. It will be more expensive than the mass-market meat but it won’t be the most expensive ground beef in stores either, said Pat Brown, the company’s CEO and founder.
VR is back! Maybe. Virtual reality headsets made a splash at CES in 2016 when Facebook’s Oculus launched the Rift and HTC launched the Vive. Since then, the industry has floundered a bit, with no breakout use for the technology yet. Oculus won’t even have an official presence at this year’s event, but that hasn’t deterred HTC, which just launched the Vive Cosmos, a new headset that Engadget reports may work with either a PC or a smartphone.
Further reading
Follow all of Quartz’s coverage from CES during the week here. For even more news and views from the trade show, check out The Verge, Engadget, and Ars Technica, or for some local flair, the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
News from around the world
Kim Jong Un visited China again. The North Korean leader’s specially outfitted train was spotted crossing China’s border on Monday. China said that Kim—who is also apparently celebrating his unconfirmed birthday—is on a four-day visit during which he will meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping. The visit comes as North Korea’s denuclearization negotiations with the US have stalled, though president Trump is considering a second meeting with Kim.
Carlos Ghosn appeared in a Tokyo court. The former Nissan chairman made his first public appearance since being arrested in November. Looking thinner and wearing plastic slippers, Ghosn, who was charged last month with financial misconduct, read out a prepared statement and rejected the idea he hid tens of millions of dollars in compensation.
Samsung’s profit plunged. The world’s largest phone-maker said its fourth-quarter operating profit will decline by 29%, amid weak chip sales. The news comes a week after Apple cut its quarterly sales forecast, sparking global market jitters.
Matters of debate
US millennials burn out at an early age. It’s not hard when your job has no downtime.
There’s nothing unusual about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “soak the rich” plan. Americans used to have very high taxes on the rich, and it worked fine.
Consumers don’t care about tech giants’ patent wars. It makes sense for Apple to put iTunes on Samsung TVs.
Surprising discoveries
Preliterate children are texting using emoji. And their usage patterns are extremely unique.
The Milky Way is due for a cataclysmic collision. In about 2 billion years, a run-in with the Large Magellanic Cloud could restart our galaxy’s dormant black hole.
A lost Leonardo painting may have been a money-laundering scam. Both the seller and buyer are being investigated by US special counsel Robert Mueller.
Our best wishes for a successful day in Las Vegas. Please send any news, tips, traffic shortcuts, and fake meats to us, Dave, Ashley, and Mike. The best way to keep up with news while you’re on the go this week is the Quartz app for iPhone and Android.