CES 2012 to Create Over US$1Trillion in Post-show Business Opportunities

Taipei, Feb. 1, 2012 (CENS)--The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2012, rounding off on Jan. 13 in Las Vegas, is expected to create post-show business opportunities worth US$1.38 trillion in the year, up 4.5% from US$993 billion estimated in 2011, with the growth to be mainly led by smartphones and emerging markets, according to Topology Research Institute (TRI), a global market researcher.

TRI indicated that fast-growing consumer demand in emerging countries will serve as a major drive for CES's post-show business potential, as these markets are estimated to absorb 46% of the global sales of consumer electronics, including smartphones, feature phones, LCD TVs, notebook PCs, desktop PCs, digital cameras, tablet PCs, etc., this year. The share is six percentage points higher than a year ago.

The market researcher added that sales of smartphones in emerging countries are expected to post the strongest growth of 22% compared to that by any other category, with sales of notebook PCs to increase 15% yearly.

TRI also noted that CES 2012 also heralded potential trends for various prospective technologies, including speech recognition-incorporated human-computer interface, higher-resolution display, fourth-generation communication, and display panels using IGZO (indium gallium zinc oxide) TFT (thin film transistor) or AMOLED+IPS (active matrix organic light emitting diode + in-panel switching).

Noteworthily, with new technologies increasingly used, the price gap between low-end and high-end consumer electronic devices will widen more significantly this year than last year, when budget-priced products still prevailed in the market, stated TRI.

The market researcher cited the enormous wealth gap between the rich and ordinary people in the world to testify the foreseen polarized price gap, pointing out that 8% of the global population control 79% of the world's wealth, compared to 68% of the population possessing only 4.2% of the wealth. The huge economic inequality will speed up the widening of the price gap of consumer electronic devices to some extent in the short term.