CES 2007 - Part II: IPTV on Xbox 360, iPhone and DTX

Final Words

As a show, this year's CES was relatively disappointing.  We spent far more time walking around the show than actually seeing new product and honestly, one of the most interesting announcements wasn't even at the show but rather at Macworld in San Francisco.  However disappointing the show was, it served as an example of the upcoming struggles in this new world of PC and CE technology convergence. 

As we've already mentioned, convergence is no longer about if or when, but how and who.  The culmination of decades of evolving PC and CE technology has left us with an industry that has the ability to do much, but remains largely untapped.  In many ways, AMD's DTX announcement highlights a major necessity for the next-generation of convergence products to succeed: standards. 

The entire PC industry was built around standards and companies doing their best to achieve greatness within the confines of those standards.  For us to truly have useful convergence products we need the same sort of consumer influenced standards; with everything from DRM to cellphone platforms, unity and interoperability are necessary to build useful products in the convergence space.

With its Vista, Xbox 360 and IPTV strategy, Microsoft appears to have its mind (and products) in the right place.  In one fell swoop Microsoft broke into the living room, a part of the digital household that everyone had talked about entering but few actually had. 

As competitive as Apple has become in the past couple of years, it's tough to compete with Microsoft's strategy when it comes to infiltrating the digital home.  However with the success of the iPod and initially looking at the iPhone, it appears that Apple's greatest chance for success in the current convergence market is when you're outside of your digital home.  At first glance, the iPhone appears to be what we've wanted from PDAs and later from smartphones for years now.  As always, we'll have to reserve judgment until we've got a unit in hand but the demos look impressive.

One thing is for sure; the market is changing, and the coming years will be filled with many frustratingly poor attempts at intelligent devices.  If the PC industry's evolution is any indication, the result of a bit of suffering will be a much more fun world for technology enthusiasts.