CES Not Just for Consumers Any More

Kathryn Weldon

Summary Bullets:

• CES held a surprising amount of content for the mobile enterprise.  Wearables and the connected car were major themes, demonstrating interesting use cases and partnerships.
• AT&T’s Developer Conference, co-located with CES, highlighted a number of recent enterprise announcements around services, partnerships and infrastructure.

While we can (and frequently do) debate whether mobile consumer electronics devices and other B2C solutions are ‘consumer’ or ‘enterprise,’ it is clear that they are ‘both.’  Businesses investing in mobile solutions that ultimately improve their relationships and communications with their consumer customers (or provide their customers with new services and products from which they generate revenues) clearly have enterprise mobility issues to solve.  At CES, wearables and  the connected car were major themes.  Wearables are potentially a large (if hugely hyped) market with some interesting enterprise use cases.  Not only can smart watches and smart jewelry (and in theory products based on Google Glass) take over some business communication tasks from smartphones, but wearables seem likely to take hold as B2C solutions for fitness and health monitoring (e.g., connected ‘lifebands’ that monitor how far and how fast you walk, UV-tracking bracelets).  Real enterprise usage still seems a long way off, however, even for smart watches and Google Glass applications.