CES 2022: Key trends

Many attendees opted for digital-only participation, making the halls of the usually teeming convention centers eerily deserted. Attendance dropped by over 75% from 2020—the last time the show was held in-person—with 40,000 visitors this year compared to 171,000 in 2020. In the end, the show was cut down by one day, running for three days instead of its usual four.

Alongside many key exhibitors, the lofty, aspirational tone of last year’s show was also notably missing. At CES 2021, product launches took a back seat to an industry-wide focus on the greater good—perhaps because introducing flashy new gadgets would have been tone deaf at best in the midst of an economic crisis and a global health emergency. Although economic hardship and health concerns haven’t disappeared and are spiking again, the spotlight was firmly back on product innovation at CES 2022.

"There's a lot of buzz about the metaverse today. And it is in fact a new trend in the industry, and one that I think is going to evolve over the next roughly 20 years," said Steve Koenig, Vice President for Research at the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), at a CES 2022 press session. "We're starting to talk about the metaverse now the same way we started to talk about the internet in the early 1990s. And so if you remember back to that time, when we were all using 56k modems and dial-up internet service, it was impossible to imagine the things we'd be doing online today. I think the same is true with Metaverse."

Wunderman Thompson launched a bespoke metaverse, in partnership with metaverse platform Odyssey, featuring avatar-based networking, a presentation by Wunderman Thompson Intelligence global director Emma Chiu on the future implications of the metaverse, and different rooms illustrating potential applications, from retail to gamevertising.

Noveto is redefining the personal audio experience. The company unveiled invisible headphones, which deliver in-ear audio over the air. A mini soundbar will use beamform technology to transmit two pockets of sound just outside the user’s ears, for private, 3D and immersive listening without any in- or over-the-ear hardware.

Sona is exploring the healing power of music. The new music therapy app for anxiety launched at CES 2022, and took home an innovation award. “We're on a mission to validate music as medicine,” Sona founder Neal Sarin tells Wunderman Thompson Intelligence. All music is created in-house by curated composers and Grammy-winning engineers using a proprietary composition process that increases alpha brain waves to help listeners relax, Sarin explains.

Biped introduced a smart harness that operates as an AI copilot for blind and visually impaired people. The device uses 3D cameras to monitor the environment and detect obstacles, warning the wearer of potential collisions using 3D sounds transmitted through bone conduction earphones.

OrCam was awarded a CES innovation award for its camera that clips to glasses to help visually impaired people identify and interpret facial expressions. It also reads out printed and digital text, helps identify products, and has a “smart reading” feature that lets wearers search for specific information.

Samsung highlighted its accessibility-enhancing functionality on its smart TVs. The features include a voice guide, which provides spoken information about controls, such as channels and volume level; an avatar sign language guide, which helps users understand and navigate TV menus; SeeColors, which optimizes color calibration for people with color viewing deficiency; and auto caption position, which automatically positions closed captioning to avoid overlap with text or on-screen logos.

The TV screens of the future are getting an NFT upgrade. Samsung announced plans at CES to integrate NFT viewing into its 2022 TV lineup. This will include an NFT TV platform, in partnership with Nifty Gateway, where creators can share their art and potential buyers can browse and preview NFTs, and where anyone can go to learn about an NFT’s history and blockchain metadata. The screens will also include a smart calibration feature to optimize display settings for NFT viewing and an auto-rotation wall mount to switch between portrait and landscape displays.

“With demand for NFTs on the rise, the need for a solution to today’s fragmented viewing and purchasing landscape has never been greater,” the company said in a press release. “In 2022, Samsung is introducing the world’s first TV screen-based NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator, a groundbreaking platform that lets you browse, purchase, and display your favorite art—all in one place.”