The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is Over, but the Speculation is just Beginning

We’re a household that loves gadgets. I work in SEO and my husband is a programmer. Gadgets are the backbone of our lives. Our kids were barely upright when they began trying to poke at our computers and bang on the laptop keys. So you can imagine that the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been a hot topic in our world.

Chris Crum gives a nice overview of the gadgets of the year in his article “A Glimpse of this Year’s Upcoming Gadgets”. From new products in televisions and blue-ray players to touch notebooks and e-readers, there really is something to appeal to everyone at CES. I know a number of non-technical people who will be excited about the developments in television related products, while the more technically oriented are drooling over the latest and greatest computer gadgets. It’s a wide range.

As an SEO aficionado, there were a few releases that caught my eye on Chris Crum’s list:

- Microsoft and HP combining their efforts and providing Bing as the default search engine with MSN as the default homepage for HP PCs in 42 countries.
- Intel’s new family of processors.
- Palm’s updates to their webOS platform.
- Yahoo’s announcements of their new hardware partnerships.
- The availability of professional service options for the Cisco Eos social entertainment platform.
- A new browser release for Opera.
- RIM’s newest BlackBerry achievement: a presenter that can show PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, etc straight from a BlackBerry device.
- Ford’s Internet-ready vehicles.

Some of these announcements are changes in the way computers work. Updated webOs platforms, new processors, and bigger and better BlackBerries can change how much we do online, how fast the experience can be, and the flexibility of our computers, regardless of their size. SEO takes interest in these developments so we can try to predict the next big changes in the way we use the Internet and how businesses access the Internet.

Other announcements, like Internet-ready vehicles, provide opportunities to expand our Internet usage and provide growth in markets like the developing mobile website marketplace. And still others have the potential to shift search engine market share, like the deal between Microsoft and HP that will expand Bing’s exposure, or swing social networking to a newer forum; both of which can have a big impact on SEO strategies.

Of course, while all of these new gadgets and releases are fun to look at and speculate about, only time will tell what will take hold of the marketplace and what will fizzle out. Right now, we’re all just looking and making notes to keep an eye on some of these developments