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Technology fanatics descend every January on Las Vegas for the International CES, a colossal gathering of gadgetry and geekery where some of the world's largest companies show off their best ideas.
This year again the show has been burdened by existential angst, with many tech writers saying they planned to skip an event no longer seen as vital. It has been ages since anything momentous was unveiled at CES. But the travails of CES are a symptom of a larger transformation in tech. The era dominated by consumer electronics - what most of us call gadgets - is in turmoil.
One reason is that many devices have been superseded by a single, all-powerful tool: the smartphone. Today, just about everything that once required a small, dedicated electronic device - from cameras to portable game consoles to GPS navigators to music players to too many others to name - works better as an app on a phone. At the same time, smartphones have created new categories of capabilities that have eclipsed gadgets as the tech industry's centre of energy and innovation.
These services, powered by smart software, use our phones' constant connection to the cloud, and their powers to connect us with one another, to create tech experiences that wouldn't have been possible with the gadgets of yesteryear. None of them would ever have graced a stage at CES, because none of these things are really gadgets; they're way more exciting than that.
Here's the important lesson for consumer electronics companies: The future of tech may not be in flashier, more powerful hardware, but instead in services enabled by clever software. The gadgets matter, but only if they allow for software that can create useful, perhaps groundbreaking services that work across all our gadgets.
"Today, what every customer expects is for their device to be a platform," said John MacFarlane, the chief executive of the connected-speaker company Sonos, referring to a design practice in which the machine's intelligence and user interface are built out of flexible software rather than baked into the hardware - thus enabling future improvements through updates.
Sonos, which was founded in 2002, was one of the first hardware start-ups to design its products this way. Sonos's speakers offer the best example of why a design that is intended to be flexible can be so useful. In 2005, when Sonos sold its first multiroom music system, the units played music stored on a computer, and they had to be controlled by the company's own touch-screen remote control. But the company believed that anyone who bought its speakers would keep them for a long time, probably a decade or more, so the device would have to be able to live through unpredictable tech changes.
As a result, in the years since, Sonos's speakers have gained a range of new powers. They can be controlled by a smartphone app, play music from dozens of streaming music services and connect to a home-automation system, allowing the system to read you the weather report when you step into your kitchen for breakfast. Sonos was a pioneer, but a range of hardware start-ups have embraced a philosophy that prizes flexible software as the heart of gadgetry.
These forward-thinking manufacturers must take pains to keep their devices one step ahead of the advance of smartphones, which are always gaining new, gadget-destroying capabilities. Many companies at CES this week are focusing on plans for integrating their devices into connected systems, rather than simply bringing out flashier hardware.
Don't expect this integration to happen overnight; it could take years before we get to a point where it's a given that any device you buy will connect to any other. Gadget makers would do well to hasten this era: Their salvation lies in software.
© 2015 The New York Times
