Shenzhen shines at CES in Las Vegas

[TaiShang]

Shenzhen shines at CES in Las Vegas
By Tan Xinyu | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-01-08

The booth of China's TCL is seen at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]
China's hi-tech hub Shenzhen continues its impressive participation at the CES consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas, which lasts from Tuesday to Friday, and the south Chinese city name is part of nearly 500 participating companies' names.

According to the Consumer Technology Association, the group that hosts the show, roughly 4,500 companies and organizations will attend this year's event, ranging from well-known brands, such as TCL, Samsung and LG, to the startups.

Among these, CES's data show that about 1,551 are Chinese companies, accounting for more than one third of the total.

The over-half-century-old annual gathering is a global stage for innovators to showcase their latest technologies, gadgets, car technology, etc. As for this year, those like artificial intelligence, smart home and vehicles, drones, robotics, virtual reality and augmented reality are the attractive spots at the CES.

The word "Shenzhen", the city in South China's Guangdong province, was also associated with 652 Chinese companies last year in the mid of the total of 1,300 ones participating in the event, the Beijing New reported.

However, the newspaper added that Chinese companies did not gain as much applaud even though nearly one third of participants were from China at that time, although Chinese-made drones were the exception.

"[Chinese] AI-powered firms will not let us down this year," Liu Dingding, a Beijing-based industry analyst, told the Global Times on last Monday.

He added that as some AI applications are now "just around the corner," Chinese companies are likely to become leaders instead of followers in some domains such as speech recognition, computer vision and autonomous driving.

In July, the State Council, China's cabinet, issued guidelines on AI development, and AI projects and other areas related to AI, such as big data, cloud computing, quantum computing, and brain science, have also been proposed.

The guideline set a goal for China to become a global innovation center in this field by 2030. The total output value of AI industry is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan ($151.78 billion).

AI has also quickly become the hottest area for Chinese start-ups, said a report by research consultancy Eurasia Group and VC firm Sinovation Ventures in December 2017. The report said that investors poured $4.5 billion into over 200 AI companies between 2012 and the third quarter of 2017.

For China's startups, they have experienced dramatic transformation over the past 10 years, from copycat versions of existing applications to true leapfrog innovation, it said.

"Usually, China's small- and medium-sized enterprises make up a large part of CES participants. When big players join the event, they will increasingly make the presence of Chinese tech firms felt," Wang Yanhui, head of the Shanghai-based Mobile China Alliance, told the Global Times.

As more Chinese companies seek their presence in the international market, they have to be fully aware of hurdles such as language barriers, different corporate management structures and tightened regulations, Liu said to the newspaper.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201801/08/WS5a531917a31008cf16da5c4f.html

@cirr , @AndrewJin , @Martian2

 

[somebozo]

China has a lot to teach Pakistan..

 

[Jlaw]

TCL products are not sold in Canada. They make good TV.

 

[cirr]

China disruptive in a good way at CES

2018-01-10 09:58

China Daily Editor: Huang Mingrui

China has made headlines at this year's CES, or Consumer Electronics Show－an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association, which officially started on Tuesday in Las Vegas, not only because the nation has sent more than 1,500 companies and once again is the top exhibitor.

The disruptive technologies and innovation that Chinese companies have demonstrated at the annual show are now seen as essential.

Chinese exhibitors account for more than one-third of the total participants at the CES this year, which is a highly-valued platform through which Chinese products are introduced to the Western world.

Some startups this year, such as electric-vehicle manufacturer Byton, joined the long list of companies from China to unveil its first drivable model car at the CES.

Chinese companies also are cutting a more distinctive and stronger presence by acquiring the center stages of the exhibition halls and convention venues and becoming used to the spotlight, where they can showcase their best and brightest ideas and products.

On Monday, Baidu held a large-scale event featuring its newest AI technologies, including autonomous driving platform Apollo and conversational artificial intelligence platform Duer-OS.

Lu Qi, Baidu's vice-chairman, group president and COO, led the presentation by asserting that "AI is changing the world, China speed."

Liu Zihong, founder of Shenzhen-headquartered Royole, which had specialized in human-machine interface technologies and flexible displays since 2012, now operates a team of 1,600 members from 16 countries.

"Our research team owns a total of 1,600 intellectual property patents, and we emphasize the value of technology and innovation," Liu said.

In 2016, Royole introduced the world's first curved car dashboard based on flexible electronics at CES. The company's flexible display mass production campus, which cost $1.7 billion, was completed in Shenzhen the same year.

It completed series Pre-D funding in October 2016, with a market valuation of $3 billion, making it one of the world's fastest-growing technology startups.

Unlike in previous years when many Chinese companies chose to stay in corner booths and were clumsy at marketing, more Chinese exhibitors are confident and know how to communicate with the outside world, said Joana Wei, a cross-border investor based in Palo Alto, California.

"I told our team to pitch for the best spot at the exhibition hall and arrange a spacious display of products," she said, referring to one of the Chinese companies she has financed, AntVR.

"Our booth space is almost the same as Google's this year," she said. "To me, this is another format of confidence and capacity display."

http://www.ecns.cn/business/2018/01-10/287715.shtml

 

[qwerrty]

Riding in Byton’s far-out concept SUV is like being in first class
Screens and space aplenty
By Sean O'Kane@sokane1 Jan 9, 2018, 6:10pm EST

https://www.theverge.com/transportation/2018/1/9/16867332/byton-electric-ev-car-ride-first-look-test-touchscreen-ces-2018
http://www.thedrive.com/tech/17290/chinese-startup-byton-to-launch-intelligent-electric-car-at-ces

--

 

[rcrmj]

an event for real IT powers```

 

[AndrewJin]

an event for real IT powers```

Fake event, the real IT event is Call Centre and Outsourced Coding Exhibition, held in Bongalala.

 

[qwerrty]

Ubtech Walker is a biped butler robot with no arms but a lot of charm
Ubtech Walker takes its first steps at CES

Posted by Paul Miller on Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Humanoids are the hardest. Atlas is the state of the art, and you might think that because Atlas has solved backflips, building a full-sized biped robot that can just walk around should be easy by now. But it’s very much not easy, especially in the home.

For starters, there’s the noise. Many of the best and strongest humanoids use hydraulics for strength. Even electronic servo-based robots can be loud. But more importantly, bipeds are expensive, fragile, and fall over a lot. Why would you want that in your home?

The people at Ubtech, a China-based robotics company that sells a wide range of home and toy robots, are working on the impossible, and possibly the impractical: Walker, a human-sized biped for the home.

Walker is supposed to be a “complete home butler,” which mostly means it can patrol your home, act as a calendar and email assistant, and play a slow game of soccer with your kids. It has a smooth, quiet gait, which Ubtech credits to its homegrown digital servos. I watched Walker do a little dance, chase a soccer ball, and descend stairs. (The stair ascend demo wasn’t ready yet.)

Of course, most biped robots fall over a lot, and are too heavy to have anywhere near your kids. Walker is a surprisingly light 82 pounds, and is designed to be in balance at all times. If it loses power, it should stay stable right where it is. It’s also designed to fall away from danger if it has to fall.

I’m not positive a robot without a manipulation arm can really be called a “home butler,” so thankfully Ubtech is working on arms to add on to Walker. Ubtech also builds a wheeled robot with a robot arm, so the real challenge won’t be building an arm, but keeping Walker in balance while it’s manipulating its environment.

Walker is an ambitious project, most of all because it’s designed to be relatively affordable — in full-sized biped terms, that means “less than hundreds of thousands of dollars,” but I got the impression Ubtech is aiming for a lot lower than that. Walker is supposed to launch sometime in 2019.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/9/16869120/ubtech-walker-biped-butler-robot-ces-2018

 

[TaiShang]

Chinese phone maker Vivo brings working in-display fingerprint sensor to CES 2018

By Gong Zhe
2018-01-10 16:36

Where is the fingerprint sensor on your smartphone? On the home button, on the back or maybe it doesn't have one at all?

Now there is a more convenient solution that has been put into an actual product: Under the screen.

Chinese phone maker Vivo is showing off a new smartphone with an in-display fingerprint sensor made by touch-device maker Synaptics, as promised last month.

According to a demonstration video on The Verge, the scanner is still located at lower end of the device, like a virtual button. but after unlocking the phone, same area of the screen will respond like a regular touchscreen.

The Verge reported that the technology can currently only work with OLED screens, which can be widely seen on Samsung phones.

In the demo, the sensor responds as fast as a standard fingerprint sensor.

CGTN reporters in Las Vegas will also try out the phone. We will update with our review later.

It's natural for a touchscreen device to have the fingerprint scanning part in its display, as most touching is done by fingers now (sorry Samsung Note series).

Another Chinese smartphone manufacturer, Huawei, will also feature in-screen fingerprint sensors in their 2018 phones.

Huawei Photo

"We are stilling waiting for the technology to mature. Our standard is higher," said He Gang, the company's head of mobile phone department.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/30677a4e77677a6333566d54/share_p.html

 

[TaiShang]

China’s Lenovo branches out from traditional PCs

By CGTN's Mark Niu
2018-01-11

Currently taking place in Las Vegas, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is an annual fixture at which the world's tech manufacturers get together to launch the next big things in technology and start the trends for each year.

One company making ambitious moves this year is Chinese PC giant Lenovo. It has ventured into new product categories with a tablet-laptop hybrid named Miix 630 and a standalone virtual reality (VR) headset, the Mirage Solo. Both have grabbed a lot of attention.

VCG Photo

2017 was another big year for VR, augmented reality (AR), and every other type of reality, and it looks like 2018 will be likewise. The Mirage Solo interested many tech giants, but some questioned the risks of PC companies investing in those innovations.

However, Christian Teismann, North America president of Lenovo, said that innovating and being prepared to take risks is the key to surviving and thriving as the world moves away from old-fashioned desk-top computers.

“If you look at how Lenovo has become a global company, it is because we always invested in new product categories. Some failed, but most of them really made a difference and changed the market,” said Teismann.

Lenovo has dropped a huge number of new tech devices on this year’s CES. With numerous new computing devices appearing on the market, Teismann was asked if PCs are threatened with extinction.

VCG Photo

“It is a transformation. What you see is that the traditional replacement cycles of the traditional desktops or notebooks are getting longer and longer. Therefore, people do not need to buy a PC every three years or four years anymore,” he replied.

Teismann predicted big changes in the global PC market as these computers’ makers get involved in AR and VR.

Global PC sales in the third quarter of 2017 dropped by 0.5 percent year-on-year, while Lenovo’s sales increased by 0.1 percent, he said.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/3351444d78677a6333566d54/share_p.html

 

[Menthol]

Riding in Byton’s far-out concept SUV is like being in first class
Screens and space aplenty
By Sean O'Kane@sokane1 Jan 9, 2018, 6:10pm EST

https://www.theverge.com/transportation/2018/1/9/16867332/byton-electric-ev-car-ride-first-look-test-touchscreen-ces-2018
http://www.thedrive.com/tech/17290/chinese-startup-byton-to-launch-intelligent-electric-car-at-ces

--

Wow! After Nio, then Byton.

 

[TaiShang]

Glasses-free 3D: Adding a new dimension

By CGTN's New Money Team
2018-01-12

Recent years have seen the explosion of visual technologies, and glasses-free 3D is one of them. In this global race, Chinese tech companies are not lagging behind, with some becoming a major force in bringing this futurist life to reality.

Li Jinyu is an avid player of Arena of Valor, a DOTA-inspired mobile game that has taken China by storm. She recently switched to a phone that can display 3D without the need for funky-looking glasses.

At the same time, some car dealers are replacing their old paper catalogues with more fancy glasses-free 3D screens, to better introduce cars to their customers, as China is leading the way in developing the glasses-free 3D technology.

Although the wider 3D visual technology industry experiencing explosive growth, there are quite a few bottlenecks in the way, with a lack of 3D content among the most notable ones.

The chicken-and-egg situation weakens the incentive to develop 3D technology. The Chinese glasses-free 3D industry is working to create an ecosystem that helps bring industry players closer to the value chain, especially third-party content makers.

At the same time, the industry is actively seeking global expansion with access to a larger pool of technologies and bigger base of consumers. In China, the domestic stage is also big, with great prospects.

Developing glasses-free 3D is already part of China's five-year plan. Industry think tank Sino Market Research predicts that the 3D display market can potentially top 500 billion US dollars, inclusive of 50 billion dollars in the mobile phone market.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/34496a4d78677a6333566d54/share_p.html

***

SP12?

 

[AndrewJin]

 

[Three_Kingdoms]

Hisense, TCL Want to Sell You High-End TVs
These up-and-comers go after established brands with premium features
By James K. Willcox
January 08, 2018
85 SHARES

TV shoppers looking for a bargain in the past few years have increasingly embraced some newer TV brands, most notably Hisense and TCL, two very large Chinese TV manufacturers.

The initial lure of both brands was a low price for decent performance and a nice array of features. But those brands have also been building higher-end TVs.

This year in particular both companies are targeting consumers willing to spend more for a top-performing TV. The new sets the brands unveiled at the 2018 CES trade show in Las Vegas this week have some step-up features that will find them competing with premium models from better-known players such as LG, Samsung, and Sony, though presumably for a bit less money. (Little pricing information has been released so far.)

Both Hisense and TCL have been on the rise globally for several years now. According to IHS Markit, a financial analysis firm, they are now among the world’s top 10 LCD TV brands.

TCL is pushing to become the No. 3 TV brand here in the U.S., behind Samsung and Vizio. Hisense isn’t quite as close, but it also controls the Sharp TV brand here in the U.S.

“Both companies have become much more aggressive in the U.S. market over the past year,” says Deirdre Kennedy, senior analyst at retail market research firm Gap Intelligence. “But TCL in particular has been able to greatly increase its presence at large national retailers in 2017, in large part due to its arrival in Best Buy stores for the first time, and double its presence at Target and Walmart.”

Here’s a quick look at what each company has in store for consumers in 2018.

Hisense: Quantum Dots, Local Dimming

Since 2017 Hisense’s flagship Ultra High Definition TVs have used a variety of technologies found in the most advanced LCD TVs in the industry. That includes quantum dot displays for a wider palette of colors, as well as support for both HDR10 and Dolby Vision high dynamic range (HDR) formats. (HDR pumps up the TV’s ability to display the brightest whites and deepest blacks in an image, providing greater contrast.)

This year, Hisense’s top model, the H10E, adds full-array LED backlighting with local dimming and support for multiple popular voice-control platforms.

Local dimming can help the TV exert more control over brightness and contrast by dividing backlight sections into zones that can be independently dimmed and darkened. The company says the flagship set will have more than 1,000 dimmable zones, which is as many as we’ve seen on any TV so far.

Hisense is also adopting Google’s Android TV platform for its flagship set, so it has the Google Assistant voice-enabled digital assistant. And the television is compatible with Amazon’s counterpart, Alexa.

Right now the H10E will be available only in a 75-inch screen size, but the company says there will probably be a 65-inch version later in the year.

The H10E is the flagship, but it isn’t the only high-end TV in Hisense’s 2018 product lineup. The H9E is an edge-lit set that uses Hisense’s own smart-TV platform but is compatible with Alexa. The set is available in a wide range of sizes. The H9E Plus model is an Android TV with both Google Assistant and Alexa; 55- and 65-inch versions are available. Hisense didn’t release most prices at CES but did say it expects the 55-inch H9E Plus to sell for less than $700.

So are Hisense TVs worth considering? Lately, Hisense TVs have generally done well in our TV ratings. We didn’t buy the H10D flagship last year, but the other models we tested typically had very good high-definition picture quality and very good UHD performance.

TCL: Roku TV Smarts, Local Dimming

TCL's 6 Series 4K Roku TVs will get a Roku voice-powered digital assistant as an update later in the year.
Photo: TCL
Many TCL sets also did very well in our ratings in 2017, though the brand was a somewhat less consistent performer than Hisense overall.

This year there are two new TCL series. At the top of the lineup are the 6 Series sets, which feature full-array backlights with local dimming, as well as support for both HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR. These will be available in 55- and 65-inch screen sizes.

TCL says the 55-inch set has 96 local dimming zones and the 65-inch set has 120 zones. That’s far less than the 1,000 or more zones that Hisense—and Samsung—top-tier sets claim. But that may not matter for most consumers if TCL’s sets end up priced significantly lower than those TVs.

The 6 Series models have a new enhanced Roku TV remote with voice search. Many Roku TVs will get their own digital voice assistant—called the Roku Entertainment Assistant—later this year as part of a firmware update.

TCL also has a new 5 Series, with screen sizes ranging from 43 to 65 inches. It has many of the same features, though apparently not the local dimming feature.

We’ll be buying many of these new TVs this year and bringing them into our TV labs for a full evaluation to see whether you are truly able to get higher levels of performance—especially HDR—at a lower price than what’s offered by the major brands.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with some pricing information.

https://www.consumerreports.org/lcd-led-oled-tvs/hisense-tcl-high-end-tvs-are-they-worth-it/

 

[TaiShang]

Spotlight: CES 2018 reveals top tech trends bridging from connected age to data age
Xinhua, January 13, 2018

by Xinhua Writer Guo Shuang

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- The world's largest electronics trade show, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), concluded in Las Vegas Friday and revealed tech trends in the new year.

This week, more than 3,900 exhibitors from around the world gathered at the Las Vegas Convention Center, with a record-breaking show floor that spanned more than 2.75 million net square feet of exhibition space, launching some 20,000 products of gadgety goodness.

"This year we start to bridge to that data age," Steve Koenig, senior director of market research at the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), told Xinhua. "It's not like just switching or flicking a switch. We are building towards that and CES sets the pace for a bridging into that data age from the connected age where we are today."

5G COMES INTO FOCUS

The top trend for the show and the year is the pending arrival of 5G (fifth-generation wireless technology) networks, which promises multigigabit download speeds for broadband data, Koenig said.

Though full commercial deployments probably won't be complete until the early 2020s, many companies at CES 2018 are festooned with 5G exhibits. Intel, Qualcomm, Verizon, China's Baidu...everyone is talking about 5G at the show, exploring how reliable, fast, and always-on wireless connections will fuel the rise of smart cities, driverless cars, and even remote health care.

The anticipation is so high because more and more people have begun to realize that 5G is expected to greatly reduce latency to let devices communicate with each other with extremely fast response times.

Industry executives said the technology will create a "massive" Internet of Things (IoT), enabling new business models and making self-driving vehicles a reality.

5G is expected to get a little bit real later this year as it's barely out of the experimental phase, with the first official 5G standard released just last month.

AI ROCKS

Narrow applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are everywhere at CES 2018. But behind all of the buzzes are real developments.

AI applications include speech recognition, computer vision and machine learning. This year's CES highlighted companies doing deep learning-based intelligence solutions to predict the probability of diseases and other real-world incidents.

"AI is global and technology innovation benefits everyone on the globe," said Qi Lu, president and COO of Baidu Group, which is now a formidable new force in AI. "For all of us working in the tech industry in China, doing AI innovations will enable us to embrace the opportunities, to lead, and to serve more people around the world, because together we can change the world and make it a better place."

A considerable amount of attention is paid to AI's role in digital personal assistants, autonomous driving capabilities and industry forecast.

SELF-DRIVING IN A CARPOOL LANE

In recent years, the automotive halls at the CES have grown in size, with almost every automaker becoming now a tech company.

The autonomous tech company Aptiv has even partnered with rideshare leader Lyft to offer public rides in autonomous cars during this year's show.

Toyota announced a new concept vehicle dubbed e-Palette, a fully automated, battery-electric rolling rectangle on wheels that can be customized. The company has already enlisted Amazon, Uber, Pizza Hut and China's ride-hailing giant Didi as partners.

Automakers like Ford, Hyundai, BMW and Audi showed off the latest improvements to self-driving technologies this year. Some features, such as smarter parking assistance and less error-prone collision avoidance may appear in cars in the coming years.

Baidu, typically known as the Google of China, is becoming a major new player in self-driving technology. The company rolled out a big upgrade to its open-source platform "Apollo 2.0" and set a goal to refine autonomous driving at "China speed."

"The era has been changing slowly. It's an evolution, not a revolution," Robin Raskin, founder and president of Living in Digital Times, a team of technophiles, told Xinhua. "This is the year that people must start talking about the benefit versus the bad side of technology."

"In the context of families and consumers, it's not about geeks anymore. It's about people," she added. Enditem

http://www.china.org.cn/world/Off_the_Wire/2018-01/13/content_50222844.htm