Steve Rogerson looks forward to CES in Las Vegas in January.

A lot has happened in the past two years, but we haven’t been able to enjoy the wow factor of seeing innovations face to face. That is why January’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas should be particularly interesting.

OK, I should mention at this point that at the time of writing it was still due to go ahead, and hopefully it will, but we are still in new territory when it comes to coronavirus, especially with the latest variant to worry about. That said, I feel fairly confident it will happen and I am looking forward to finding out what the show has to offer.

“People are excited to reconvene,” said Karen Chupka, executive vice president of show organiser the Consumer Technology Association, speaking in a webinar this week organised by the IoT M2M Council (IMC).

The IMC is again organising the IoT Infrastructure Pavilion at the event, which has been growing steadily over recent years and got too big for the Westgate Hotel and is thus now in the big convention centre alongside AI, machine learning, smart city and healthcare sectors.

There will be more than 1700 companies at the whole event including some of the biggest names in the industry alongside clever start-ups and everything in between.

One of the effects of the pandemic has been that people have been spending more time at home, and that has led to a rapid increase in smart-home technology.

“The pandemic has meant home owners are more likely to buy tech products and it is easier than ever to connect to the internet,” said Chupka. “The digital health and wellness segment continues to grow. There have been major expansions of services such as telehealth during the pandemic. Wearable technology has continued to grow as well as home fitness products.”

However, as she said, innovation does not happen in a vacuum and the close interactions between people, something we have been denied now for so long, could at last be coming back. Stay away omicron, we don’t want you.

One area that CES has become famous for in recent years is automotive. There are now more vehicle-related launches at the show that at any of the major dedicated automotive events. The vehicle technology and auto segment will be twenty per cent larger this year.

“The automotive space at CES has transformed in recent years to a technology platform,” said Landon Garner, a senior director at KORE. “It is amazing. It has become one of the pre-eminent automotive shows in the world.”

But while the continuing move towards autonomous vehicles will be grabbing the headlines, we should not forget the switch to electric vehicles, something that is happening now and will continue. One survey reckons over half of vehicle sales will be fully electric cars – not hybrids – by 2030; that is only eight years away.

For this to be a reality, then major improvements in charging infrastructure will needed, and it looks like both the IoT and 5G technology can play a role. Followers of this industry will be aware that new players and old players are innovating in this area; almost every day there are announcements. The climate crisis has taken the debate to the front pages.

“Innovations in private networks and network optimisation can impact and positively affect the changes that we are looking for with the adoption of electric vehicles,” said Garner.

A good example of this has been KORE’s work with Car Charged UK, which deploys EV charging stations across the country. These end up behind stone walls and concrete barriers, in basements and old buildings with antiquated infrastructure.

“These are places that are very hard to reach from a signal propagation standpoint,” said Garner.

So Car Charged UK approached KORE, which came up with an approach that used hardware such as routers and antennas to drive smart roaming and multi-network, resilient connectivity. It can connect to 2G, 3G and 4G across all network operators, meaning there is a higher chance of a connection even in the most inclement radio network conditions.

From smart homes to EV charging infrastructure, and just about anything else you can think of, CES is looking once again like the place to be for those who want to keep in touch with the latest technologies. And that should mean the return of the wow factor.