WHAT does one of the world’s richest and most powerful men do when he retires?
Bill Gates gave the world a glimpse of his plans in a farewell presentation
at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week.
In a spoof video, Gates, who gives up day-to-day running of Microsoft this
summer, called friends, including Bono, Hillary Clinton and Steven
Spielberg, looking for work.
Asked to play Bill on the big screen, George Clooney passed. “It’s just not
something I’m good at. Why don’t you get Russell Crowe to do it? Or Tom
Hanks?” Clooney says to Spielberg.
When presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama rejected him as a
running-mate, he phoned Al Gore, former vice president and Inconvenient
Truth green campaigner. “No. It’s not an inconvenient time to call. Yer, I
get it. That was a good one,” Gore grimaces.
Jokes aside, Gates, who plans to oversee his charitable foundation when he
steps back in July, treated his audience to his vision of the future.
The billionaire gave his first keynote speech at CES back in 1994; two years
later he said the world had entered its first “digital decade”. The number
of personal computers topped one billion, broadband internet was starting to
take off, mobile-phone penetration had reached 40% of the world’s
population, and software had just begun to change how people enjoyed music
and photographs.
Now, Gates said, we are entering “the second digital decade”, – one that will
be focused on connecting people and one where software will be everywhere:
on phones, on televisions, in tables, cars, watches and “things yet to be
invented”, he said. “Soon computers will be in the desk, not just on them.”
Not for the first time he predicted the demise of the keyboard and the mouse,
to be replaced by gadgets that respond to touch and speech. He demonstrated
a table-like computer with a surface that responds to the movement of a
fingertip. And he said the internet would be the key to it all – the gateway
to information, entertainment and services.
There was plenty of evidence on the floor of the huge Las Vegas show that
Gates is on the right track. There were new touch-screen mobile phones,
remote controls, wristwatches, digital photoframes and video game players.
At the “Next Gen” home set up by Lifeware, everyone got an e-mail when Mum
came home, music played in every room and touch screens seemed to be on
every appliance, allowing you to switch off the lights anywhere in the
house, change the level of heating, alter the blinds, and set the alarm.
Microchips are now so cheap and smart they can be put in anything, said Stuart
Sikes, president of the research firm Parks Associates. “This was the year
of the ‘connected appliance’.”
As we enter the second digital decade, the trend was clear, said Gates. “All
media and entertainment will be software-driven.”
But the big trend at CES this year wasn’t so much about technology itself, it
was about cooperation. What good is all this technology if you can’t do
anything with it?
In the first digital decade, media firms struggled to keep up with technology.
Now the tables seem to be turning and technology firms are fighting to do
deals with them.
Talking to journalists, Toshihiro Sakamoto, president of Panasonic AVC
Networks, said his company had to do a better job of working with content
providers. Sakamoto’s firm has a show-stopping 150-inch plasma television
screen on its expo stand. “But without media firms we can’t make a big TV,”
he said, conceding that Panasonic was not good at producing television
content.
The media were everywhere at CES, and not just the several thousand accredited
reporters.
Brian Roberts, boss of the American cable giant Comcast, gave his first CES
speech, promising 1,000 high-definition movies and television shows every
month by the end of the year.
Google, which has taken to describing itself as a “broadcaster”, was setting
up meetings across the city. There was more dealing being done in hotel
suites than on the casino floors.
Three trends have come together to drive this new spirit of cooperation. The
first is the ubiquity of internet content. The internet is rapidly expanding
into every device with a chip in it. The second trend is screens. If it’s
got a flat surface, it’s going to get a screen, and that means advertising
and money. The third trend is portability. From now on consumers are going
to be able to play their music, look at their photos, and watch videos on
any device.
Between them, these trends mean it no longer works to go it alone. “The speed
of technological development is continuing at such a pace that people have
to cooperate to get their ideas on to the market,” said Sikes. Splendid
isolation is out.
Witness one of the biggest coups of CES, Sony’s deal with Warner Bros. The
Hollywood studio has signed up to Sony’s Blu-ray technology for the next
generation of DVDs. Warner has the biggest DVD catalogue on the block and
had, until recently, released films in Blu-ray and the rival HD DVD format.
So, while no official was saying it out loud, it looks like Sony has won the
battle for the next generation of high-definition discs. A number of HD DVD
announcements were cancelled in the wake of Warner’s move and Gates’s speech
notably did not dwell on the format, one that Microsoft had supported.
Nor did Gates mention the one firm that has arguably done the most to put
content back at the heart of technology: Apple.
This Tuesday, Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple, will take the stage for
the 24th Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco to reveal his
company’s latest gee-whiz gadgets and announcements. Last year, the Mac show
clashed with CES and Apple outshone its Las Vegas rival with the unveiling
of the iPhone.
Once again Apple’s influence was everywhere at CES. On the floor, hundreds of
companies, many of them household names, had products made to bolt on to
iPods and iPhones. According to one industry publication, sales of iPod
gadgets will this year top sales of compact stereo systems and the combo DVD
player/ amplifier/speaker sets known as home theatre in a box.
But the Apple effect goes deeper than add-ons. Not so long ago many
consumer-electronics firms seemed to have had a style bypass. Now, Apple has
shown that consumers actually like style and that everyone wants to be cool.
Touch screens, like the one on the iPhone, were everywhere. “The first digital
decade was largely driven by the keyboard and the mouse,” said Gates, who
has been working on touch screens for years. Now we are about to see a “very
dramatic” change in the way we use technology devices.
The next generation of digital devices will be controlled by touch, voice
commands, even pattern-recognition systems that can recognise people,
buildings, products and then give you information about those items, Gates
predicted in his speech.
Apple, too, will have content deals to announce this week. There have been
reports that it will sign a deal with the Hollywood studio Fox, owned by The
Sunday Times’s parent group News Corporation, to rent movies through its
iTunes store. There are also rumours that Apple will give a further boost to
Blu-ray, by making it the preferred high-definition disc for its computers.
But having set the trends, some have doubts that Apple can maintain its lead.
In part, Apple has become a victim of its own success. The iPod has
redefined the music industry and not everyone in the music industry is happy
about it. “Is Steve Jobs a terrorist? Yes,” said one music executive. He
said Jobs had played hardball with the music industry and many in it feel
ripped off.
NBC Universal has had a rocky relationship with Apple over the pricing of its
television shows. Last week Gates, who plugged Microsoft’s iPod competitor
Zune during his speech, announced deals with NBC Universal, along with Walt
Disney, Metro-Goldwyn -Mayer and CBS, that will bring their entertainment
content to the software-maker’s services.
Amazon is about to launch its own music service and is getting strong backing
from the music firms keen for iTunes to lose its dominance. Pepsi is backing
a promotion that will give away one billion songs on the service. The
soft-drink giant was once a partner with iTunes.
“They don’t play nicely with each other,” said one media executive.
“Everyone’s talking to everyone these days. And one of the top topics of
conversation is how we make sure Apple doesn’t dominate.”
While the competition looks tougher, it would be a fool who wrote off Apple’s
chances of leading from the front in the second digital decade.
Sikes said he had initially not been a big fan of the iPhone.
There are other phones on the market that are faster and smarter. “Then I
bought one for my wife for Christmas. It’s fantastic,” said Sikes. When Jobs
takes to the stage on Tuesday, you can bet there will be plenty of people
still happy to play with Apple.
A straw poll of the journalists who queued up for hours to make sure of their
place at Gates’s final speech put Jobs at the top for the man they would
most like to see giving CES’s keynote speech next year. Like a lot of the
ideas that come out of CES, this one probably won’t happen either. But it
just goes to show, it’s all about content.
WALL-TO-WALL TELEVISION AND A TASER WITH ITS OWN MP3 PLAYER
Panasonic 150-inch Life Screen plasma TV Why? Because they can. This
record-breaking screen is 11 feet wide and has four times the resolution of
Panasonic’s latest full HD plasma displays. Panasonic president Toshihiro
Sakamoto said: “It gives new meaning to the words reality TV.” There is no
word on price yet but gossip has it listed at an unreal $100,000.
LG watch phone It’s a phone. It’s a watch. It’s very Blake’s Seven.
Fortunately it comes with Bluetooth so that owners can use an ear-piece and
don’t have to talk holding their wrists to their heads. It’ll never get made.
Ugobe Pleo dinosaur Probably the most endearing of all robots at CES,
and there were a lot of them, many of them in human form. The $349 robotic
pet is covered in sensors, reacts to touch and acts like a cute, reasonably
well behaved puppy – but with the convenient option that it can be switched
off.
Nokia N810 internet tablet This year’s CES was all about touch. Perhaps
that’s why so many people were carrying Purina hand disinfectant. Like the
Apple iPhone, Nokia’s N810 allows you to surf the internet with your fingers
but with a keyboard attached. Its price tag is $479.
Logitech Harmony One advanced universal remote Logitech’s touch screen
remote control was a big hit at CES and won the “best in show prize” in its
category. It promises to do away with all those other controls linked to the
ever growing pile of boxes under the television set. Now you just have to
make sure you don’t lose it.
iTaser Shock Value by Timbaland? Sheer Heart Attack by Queen? What is
the best song to listen to while you Taser someone? Packaged in red, pink
and leopard skin to make it more attractive to women, Taser’s new stun gun
comes with an MP3 music player. It’s $80. It’s also illegal in the UK. Damn.
