More Reveals, Including How the Metaverse May Look – Day 1 at CES 2022

While the CES press day was big on automotive news, this theme was even more prevalent on the first day of the show proper with many of the biggest brands in this space making significant announcements. This was a far cry just a few years ago where CES was little more than an afterthought for automotive, with major players preferring to focus on the Detroit Auto Show. Perhaps today’s most significant announcement was Chrysler, the world's fourth-largest automaker, declared that by 2028 it will sell only electric vehicles. With sustainability a hot topic in the world at the moment, and a prominent theme throughout CES, this declaration is a bold statement for the vendor. We also saw Volvo announce the first autonomous driving subscription service, although this is likely some way from achieving regulatory approval, while General Motors today claimed that it expects to be selling fully autonomous cars to the general public by the mid-2020s. It also announced the first-ever Chevy electric truck, while Cadillac announced two new autonomous vehicle concepts and BMW showed off its new colour-changing paint technology.

True Wireless headphones have been one of the hottest consumer electronics products of recent years and today saw numerous new launches. JLab’s discrete Go Air Tones product in partnership with nail care brand ORLY Color Labs is designed to attract consumers who want a more subtle-looking device to Jabra’s new sports-focused Elite 4 Active. TWS is already the dominant headphone form factor, and as it becomes more popular, Futuresource expects brands to increasingly target more niche areas. Further announcements were seen from Belkin and 1More, while audio giant JBL announced three new ANC enabled TWS headphones in addition to its first gaming specific TWS product the Quantum 910. Gaming has been another hot topic of CES this year and Futuresource expects the gaming TWS market to boom this year and in the future.

Metaverse has been the buzzword of the consumer electronics industry for the past 6 months and today we saw South Korean giants Samsung and SK both present their versions of what they believe the Metaverse may look like. However, given the hype around the Metaverse recently, announcements and demonstrations from other big brands have been sparse. It remains to be seen if this will change in the coming two days of the show.

To find out more about the latest CE tech trends to watch out for in 2022, including analyst insights on January's CES announcements, download our brand new Tech Perspectives here.

For all report enquiries, please contact leon.morris@futuresource-hq.com

About the author

Guy Hammett

Guy Hammett is a Senior Market Analyst in the Consumer Electronics team at Futuresource Consulting. Guy joined Futuresource in 2016 and has worked in a variety of different Consumer Electronics areas, both continuous tracking services and one-off custom projects, and has specialised in audio research for the last four years.

He currently heads up Futuresource Consulting’s quarterly Home Audio tracking reports and twice yearly market reports forecasting out to 2024 and regularly represents Futuresource at trade conferences across the globe.