CES is over. Here are the biggest trends of 2020.

It’s been three weeks since CES 2020 ended and we hope you’ve caught your breath by now. The three-day consumer tech conference is considered the global stage for innovation. Thousands of companies (including Apple – for the first since 1992!) vie for the attention of hundreds of thousands of attendees. Suffice to say, CES can be a disorienting experience for anyone who doesn’t go with a clear goal in mind.

Even weeks after the event, it’s hard to figure out how you can turn the wave of post-event information into something useful for your company. Most of the media coverage focuses on a few star products (Sony has a car and Hyundai-Uber’s air taxi). In fact, they pay scant attention to perhaps lesser-known, but more practical products that are indicators of important trends.

Each year, it’s Iterate’s goal to filter through the noise and provide you with a better idea of the most interesting themes we spotted at CES and the products that support these trends. This article serves as a summary of the longer article that our CDO and Co-Founder, Brian Sathianathan wrote on LinkedIn.

The Human and its Machine

CES 2020 saw many products that emphasized the growing link between humans and machines. While we’re still a long way from merging entirely, machines can extend our capabilities in important ways. A well-known example is Adam Gorlitsky, a paraplegic runner who completed the Charleston marathon in 33h16’28” with the help of an exoskeleton.

Another example of an exoskeleton, showcased at CES, was Sarcos’ exoskeleton. Built in collaboration with Delta Airlines, the exoskeleton is meant for workers who handle luggage and heavy airplane parts. It makes them 20 times (!) stronger and reduces their risk of musculoskeletal disorders.

As you can tell, much of the human-machine symbiosis trend is directly or indirectly linked to healthcare. Advanced economies have increasingly aging populations. Companies will continue to use robotics to help prevent diseases, accommodate the elderly, and improve the capabilities of employees as a bigger share of the economic burden falls on them. BodyO’s AI POD is another example that confirms this trend. It’s a self-service, full-body digital scanner that tracks vital health indicators in only 10 minutes. It comes with a fitness and wellness app that gives its users personalized programs for better health.

Machines are becoming increasingly human in their interactions with us too. Neon’s Digital Humans can understand and respond to human interactions in a way that demonstrates not just intelligence, but emotions too. This will allow brands to create more human interaction with their customers, as well as provide company to elderly people.

A More Connected, Immersive Experience

Wearables are far from gimmicky anymore. They’ve become an enormous market projected to reach $57 billion at 16% CAGR in 2020. There were plenty of wearables on show at CES. The AURA Strap is one such example. This strap allows your smartwatch to provide information about your biometrics through a bioimpedance analysis (i.e. it analyses how easily electricity flows through your blood).

Another example is CareOS’ Poseidon Smart Mirror. This is a smart mirror that recognizes who you are and delivers a personified, gamified experience in the bathroom. It’s part of the Connected Home market, which is growing at a 7.5% CAGR and is likely to become a $262+ billion market over the next few years.
Similar examples at CES were Duolab, which mixes personalized capsules to create a face cream that complements your skin. As well as, Compoz, a digital fragrance diffuser that allows you to create and save your favorite scents. Expect bigger skincare and pharmaceutical companies to integrate these types of technologies into their products soon.

Finally, all the companies that we listed above run on data. Lots of data. So it’s only natural to see technologies that allow companies to more effectively collect data, filter through the noise, and deliver contextualized insights. To illustrate, one such company is Commerce.ai, which scans information about particular products from all across the Internet. This includes reviews and comments to give brands a better idea of consumer sentiment around their products. 

In Conclusion

This is inevitably only a snippet of what we discovered at CES and an even smaller snippet of everything that happened at CES. What’s important to remember is that curating technologies is at the heart of Iterate’s business. For us, CES is an opportunity to find the best technologies and start-ups that will make our members more innovative companies. If you too would like to become a company where innovation becomes easier, please feel free to contact us.