LAS VEGAS – Think your high-definition TV is hot stuff – as sharp as it gets? At the biggest trade show in the Americas, which kicks off next week in Las Vegas, TV makers will be doing their best to convince you that HDTVs are old hat, and should make room for “Ultra HDTV.” It's the latest gambit from an industry struggling with a shift in consumer spending from TVs, PCs and single-purpose devices such as camcorders to small, portable do-it-all gadgets: smartphones and tablets. The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that device shipments to US buyers fell 5 percent in dollar terms last year excluding smartphones and tablets, but rose 6 percent to $207 billion if you include those categories. The trends suggest that the International CES (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show) is losing its stature as a start-of-the-year showcase for the gadgets that consumers will buy over the next 12 months. It started out as a venue for the TV and stereo industries. Later, PCs joined the party. But over the last few years, TVs and PCs have declined in importance as portable gadgets have risen and CES hasn't kept pace. It's not a major venue for phone and tablet launches, though some new models will likely see the light of day there when the show floor opens Tuesday. The biggest trendsetter in mobile gadgets industry, Apple Inc., stays away, as it shuns all events it doesn't organize itself. Apple rival Microsoft Corp. has also scaled back its patronage of the show. For the first time since 1999, Microsoft's CEO won't be delivering the kick-off keynote. Qualcomm Inc. has taken over the podium. It's an important maker of chips that go into cellphones, but not a household name. None of this seems to matter much to the industry people who go to the show, which is set to be bigger than ever, at least in terms of floor space. The show doesn't welcome gawkers: the attendees are executives, purchasing managers, engineers, marketers, journalists and others with connections to the industry. Overall, the CEA sold a record 1.9 million square feet of floor space for this year's show. Some of the themes that will be in evidence next week are sharper TVs, bigger phones, acrobatic PCs, and attentive computing. Ultra HDTVs have four times the resolution of HDTVs. While this sounds extreme and unnecessary, you've probably already been exposed to projections at this resolution, because it's used in digital movie theaters. This year, reports point to several super-sized smartphones, with screen bigger than five inches diagonally, making their debut at the show. PC makers came up with touch screens that twist, fold back or detach from the keyboard. More experiments are expected at the show. CES has been a showcase in recent years for technologies that free users from keyboards, mice and buttons. Instead, they rely on cameras and other sophisticated sensors to track the user and interpret gestures and eye movements. Microsoft's motion-tracking add-on for the Xbox 360 console, the Kinect, has introduced this type of technology to the living room. — Agencies
