It’s been a month since we attended the 2025 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which has given us time to digest the thousands of products thrown at us over four days of attendance (and 89,407 steps!).
In addition to promoting new technical standards such as WiFi 7 and HDMI 2.2 (both doubling respective bandwidths), there were five innovation themes that percolated to the top of my list, which I believe we will see integrated into products we use in our homes, and possibly our offices over the next few years.
Narrow AI Integration: No surprise here as “Artificial Intelligence” was touted in everything from washers to mirrors to barbeques to houseplants. My key takeaway is that this years’ products are adding more scripted capabilities that provide responses to the most requested features, making them easier or more intuitive to use.
We would classify these as “narrow AI” more similar to what Netflix recommendations or Amazon Alexa provides than actually participating with your thoughts or actions, …basically incremental innovations to existing products.
Bendable Screens: Digital screens that could roll, fold, or bend appeared in a variety of TV, laptop and smartphone displays showing that manufacturers believe this innovation has finally come to practical fruition (think about the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold smartphone now becoming a “tri-fold”).
LG increased the size of their 32” UltraGear OLED screens to 45” that can “bend” at the touch of a button from a flat screen to a 900 Radius curvature. On the laptop front, Lenovo featured a 14” laptop with a “rollable” screen that is inside the laptop chassis but can raise the screen vertically to a 16.7” format adding 50% more viewable space, which is a technology we saw emulated in large screen TVs last year.
Eyeglass “Platform:” Smart glasses have been a promised innovation for more than a decade (remember Google Glass[holes] from 2013?) but seemed to get side-tracked by the innovations in virtual reality googles, which have made headway into the gaming space.
Well, this year, there were multiple products rolled out in an “eye glass” format. Amazon Echo Frames with built-in Alexa to manage the features of your smart home and listen to your favorite podcast or music. Another format called Nuance Audio had built-in hearing aids with six integrated microphones so you can clearly hear the person you are directly speaking with (or listen in on other peoples’ conversations?).
One interesting “outlier” was from a company called Halliday that added a “DigiWindow” which is a screen the size of a pencil eraser head that would “project” a 3.5” image to display alerts, translations and other notices (similar to looking at notifications on your smartwatch).
Robotic Autonomy: The ability for a farm tractor, lawnmower, or vacuum cleaner to operate more effectively around obstacles was a key innovation that MANY more vendors touted than last year. John Deere which featured autonomous farming tractors last year, expanded their commercial-grade capabilities to quarry trucks, fruit and nut tree automation, and to robotic lawnmowers working to tidy up golf courses before the morning starts (which caught the eye of Martha Stewart!).
At the consumer level, we witnessed a slew of autonomous lawnmowers that could “geo-fence” your yard, trim and then park back at the recharging station as well as pool cleaning bots, again more a maturation of the technology we saw over last year.
Multi-Platform Robots: Another trend that jumped out at us was the number of product vendors adding multiple components to their existing consumer products to expand capabilities. Think about adding “Swiss army knife” features and you get the jest of the innovation.
Starting with an autonomous outdoor robot, Yarbo added attachments to first “mow” the lawn, then a “blower module” to clear grass and leaves, and for wintertime, the platform has a snow blower option. Switchbot took this same concept to your indoor vacuum cleaner which can also be connected to a mobile delivery platform to provide a cooling fan, air purifier, security camera, or to deliver snacks from the kitchen!
And since we are on vacuum cleaners, Roborock, actually installed a mechanical arm to their Saros vacuum that can be used to pick up objects such as socks or tissues that are discarded on the ground and put them out of the way so it can finish its cleaning job.
CES has evolved over the years from becoming a radio and home appliance show and expanding to automotive and computer technology, to an innovation platform for expanding consumer electronic products that have infiltrated every aspect of our personal and business lives.
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Roman H. Kepczyk, CPA.CITP, CGMA is director of Firm Technology Strategy for Rightworks and partners exclusively with accounting firms on production automation, application optimization and practice transformation. He has been consistently listed as one of INSIDE Public Accounting’s Most Recommended Consultants, Accounting Today’s Top 100 Most Influential People, and CPA Practice Advisor’s Top Thought Leaders
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