July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

More than 1 million Android mobile devices are shipping each week with a technology called near-field communications (NFC), which allows you to tap your phone to another a device and transfer data instantly.

But that’s not fast enough for chip maker Broadcom. Today, the Irvine, Calif.-based company said it is introducing a new chip at the upcoming 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show that lowers the cost of NFC. It does so by packing the NFC capability within a chip that has a total of four radios, including Bluetooth, FM radio, Wi-Fi, and NFC. By packing several features together, Broadcom is able to reduce the overall price of every feature on the chip.

NFC is a short-range technology that allows someone to tap a phone with an NFC chip against another device with an NFC chip and establish a data link. You could, for instance, transfer a video from a smartphone to a tablet in an instant by tapping them together lightly.

The new Broadcom chip will be available in early 2013. NFC will enable new applications such as mobile payments, which are expected to grow from $4.2 billion in completed transactions in 2012 to $100 billion in 2016, according to ABI Research. John Devlin, an analyst at market researcher ABI, said, “We predict that over three and a half billion NFC-enabled devices will ship over the next five years, opening up huge market opportunities for companies like Broadcom. As a leader in wireless combination technology and with strong existing OEM relationships, Broadcom is well positioned to capitalize on this growth in smartphones and other consumer electronic devices.”

Broadcom also launched a single-card solution that combines its 5G Wi-Fi chip with a stand-alone NFC chip. NFC is expected to be used in game controllers (it’s currently used in the Nintendo Wii U tablet), TVs, remote controls, computer keyboards, mice, headsets, printers and more. One cool use is tapping a smartphone on a TV to transfer a video to the TV.

Photo via Shutterstock

Back in January, the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show broke attendance records, with 156,153 people coming to see what’s hot in tech. And this year, the show is likely to be just as big.

The show is on track to match last year’s attendance and will set a new record in terms of square footage on the show floor, Consumer Electronics Association chief executive Gary Shapiro (pictured above) told VentureBeat. The annual CES event in Las Vegas is the U.S.’s largest tech show. Shapiro said this year’s show, which runs January 8-11, will cover more than 1.85 million square feet. That says a lot about the health of the $1 trillion electronics industry.

“We’re feeling terrific,” he said. “Every day brings more good news. We are bigger than last year, in terms of our footprint. That’s how we measure the size of the show in the trade-show world. It can’t get a lot bigger because we’re space-constrained for this year and next year in the terms of our contracts and the space available in Las Vegas. But we’re setting a new record. We’re far enough above our record last year that we’re comfortable saying it’s broken.”

The number of exhibitors will likely be around 3,319, or close to the same number as last year. Shapiro isn’t making exact projections.

Shapiro’s job is to make sure that you feel like you’re left out if all of your tech friends are going to Las Vegas and you’re not. But he contends that CES doesn’t pack in locals and tourists like sardines. The screening measures are tough, especially for anyone attending from Nevada and Southern California. You really do have to be an industry professional to get in.

And Shapiro said the show is going to be packed even without Microsoft, which has traditionally given the opening keynote on the night before the event starts. This year, the opening keynote will be by Paul Jacobs, chief executive of mobile chip maker Qualcomm. That change is symbolic, as Microsoft represented the PC industry, while Qualcomm generates billions on the strength of smartphone and tablet chip sales. Shapiro said the keynote slot was “intensely sought after.”

But Shapiro believes there’s another reason for the show’s popularity.

“It’s the world’s largest annual innovation event, and innovation is a focus of a lot of different companies,” he said. “In Washington, it’s bipartisan. Everyone’s talking about it. Internationally, every country wants to be an innovative country, so they come. We’re getting diverse industries coming. We know what areas we’re growing in. We’re growing in the automobile area. We have seven of the 10 largest car companies exhibiting. The thing I’m really excited about is the startup area. We did a deal last year for Eureka Park and we thought we’d have 30 companies. We had 100, and this year we have 140.”

The tech trends

Another big draw will be anything connected to Apple. Apple employees are coming, but Apple traditionally doesn’t exhibit or speak at CES. But the iLounge section devoted to Apple-related products built by other companies is now going to have 440 companies across 120,000 square feet.

“Digital health is absolutely huge,” Shapiro said. “We’re up 25 percent there. We know a number of our keynoters will be talking about it. Almost 10 percent of our exhibitors have something to do with health care. We’re featuring a company called HealthSpot, which has a [HealthSpot]Station. It’s basically an ATM for health care. You go into this little room, it weighs and measures you, you hit a touch screen with your symptoms, and then it connects you to the appropriate doctor. The doctor can raise other measurement stuff, and if you’re in or near a pharmacy, you get a prescription.”

The show will also have a section for electric vehicles, dubbed Go Electric Drive. The Sustainable Planet section will return with an emphasis on green technology. And there will be a section for photo imaging products, connectivity, and the smart grid. Some 37 gaming companies will be spread across the show.

Shapiro said we’ll see a lot of touchscreen, gesture, and sensor technology. There will also be a lot of “wireless wallets,” or ways to pay for goods on the run. Enterprise companies are also showing up since they don’t really have a home.

“There’s a shift in the sense of the business world,” Shapiro said. “Although it’s called the International [Consumer Electronics Show], there’s more and more business going on. There’s no real business show anymore. Comdex went away. A lot of CIOs are coming to the show, given the business adoption of consumer technology. Obviously the cloud is very hot. We’re seeing cloud-based services. I mentioned digital health care. Wireless home automation is definitely a trend we’re seeing.”

While most people have purchased high-definition TVs, the consumer companies are starting to hawk UltraHD TVs, which have 4K resolution, or more than 4,000 horizontal lines, compared to 1,080 for HD TVs. (Hopefully, UltraHD, which can cost $25,000, will fare better than 3D TV). Shapiro also expects there will be a lot of 3D printing technology. And car technology will focus on connectivity.

Tech issues up for discussion

Lots of members of Congress will attend the show, and all five commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission will be there. With them will come discussion about how the industry managed to defeat last year’s Stop Online Piracy Act, which, among other things, tried to shift the burden for dealing with piracy to web site owners.

“Last year, we were proud about how CES was where people figured out how we’re going to fight this thing,” Shapiro said. “There was talk about an Internet blackout, and it was less than two weeks after that the whole thing shifted. A bill named SOPA will never appear in Congress again. It’d be like naming your kid Adolf. It just won’t happen.”

Issues that will come up this year are privacy and the environment. The fiscal cliff will come up. Immigration is still an issue, as the House recently approved a bill to allow students pursuing advanced degrees to receive legal immigration status in the U.S. Shapiro, who wrote a book last year on American competitiveness, argued heavily for that change. He said he was encouraged that Apple has decided to manufacture some of its goods in the U.S. again. He has another book coming out called Ninja Innovation.

“That’s focused more on innovative companies rather than just public policy,” he said. “There’s a lot in there about CES and how companies have used CES to get their message out, about CES as a venue and a strategy.”

Last year, more than 5,000 media and industry analysts attended, with coverage of CES up 35 percent from a year earlier.

Will swings in the financial markets affect attendance? Shapiro said, “I worry more about the weather than anything else.” As for the big product, Shapiro said, “I”m usually wrong when I predict that stuff.”

While the show is long gone in terms of the tech news cycle, the numbers are interesting because they verify the feeling that the tech sector is back to its old self and is possibly becoming a little frothy. The show drew 31,677 people from outside the U.S. over four days, up 30 percent from a year ago.

The show was back to its pre-recession size, with big bus lines, cab lines, and crowded bars. Still, the Las Vegas spectacle show has seen bigger crowds in the past, with the biggest attendance at 152,203 in 2006.

The certified audit by Veris Consulting confirms that CES is still the world’s largest consumer technology trade show and is North America’s largest annual trade show of any kind. Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association (which puts on the show), said the show is still a must-attend event for the tech industry. Even though tech people are talking about video conferencing and telepresence technologies, it seems that face-to-face still works.

The show floor had 1.6 million square feet of exhibit space and 2,700 exhibitors. About 20,000 new products were introduced. Attendees came from 140 countries. About 43 percent of the attendees are senior-level executives. Last year, exhibitors had 1.44 million square feet of space, and the biggest year for exhibits was January 2008, with 1.86 million square feet of space.