Analysts from our Emerging Devices Strategies / Wireless Smartphone Strategies / Handset Country Share Tracker / Smartphone Model Tracker services are attending CES 2017, one of the biggest and most talked about mobile and electronic trade shows, in Las Vegas, US, this week, from Thursday 5th to Sunday 8th January, 2017
Our previous device related analysis / commentary can be viewed as below:
CES 2017 Device Blogs:
Day Two: Drones (here)
Day Two: Robots (here)
Day One: (here)
Other Device Related Commentaries in ( Blog 1, Blog 2, Blog 3, Blog 4)
Some of the device highlights following our two day coverage of CES 2017 are as below:
1. Asus enters the niche AR smartphone segment: Asus launched the ZenFone AR smartphone to enter the niche AR smartphone segment. Lenovo with its Phab 2 pro is the only other major competitor in the segment. Asus has been struggling to grow its global market share and does not feature among the top 10 global smartphone vendors, in our recent rankings from the Wireless Smartphone Strategy (WSS) service report. The vendor has been confined largely to the Asia Pacific region with India, Indonesia and Taiwan as its key markets. Detailed rankings and market share available in our report from the Handset Country Share Tracker (HCST) Service.
Asus ZenFone does have a few firsts to its credit as it would be the only phone to have both the Google Tango and Daydream on board. It is also the first smartphone to sport an 8GB RAM and would be powered by the Snapdragon 821 processor.
Asus ZenFone 3 Zoom was the other launch from this vendor in CES 2017 and focus here was on the imaging capability. The device boasts of two 12 megapixel camera’s in its back and one front facing camera of 13 megapixel. Asus employs Tritech+ technology which has three aspects to it including a laser autofocus system, subject tracking and dual pixel phase detection. The optical zoom on this update has been toned down to 2.3X when compared to its predecessor ZenFone Zoom which had 3X.
2. ZTE focusses on mid-range smartphones: ZTE unveiled two new smartphones at CES 2017: The Blade V8 Pro and the Hawkeye. The Blade V8 Pro comes with 13 pixel rear dual camera’s and fingerprint sensors. Introduced in the US market, V8 pro takes the Blade series from ZTE into this market. Per our latest report from the HCST service, ZTE is among the top five smartphone vendors in the US market.
Along with the Blade V8 Pro ZTE also introduced Hawkeye: the world’s first crowd sourced phone. Hawkeye is an outcome of Project CSX, which was crowdsourcing initiative launched last year by ZTE and intends to use the consumer feedback to launch new devices. The phone while not being a standout in terms of specification includes an eye-tracking software and self-adhesive feature.
We continue to track and analyse the device launches and announcements at the CES 2017. You may visit our blogs section for further coverage of the two penultimate days of the event.