At a session on “Gaming is the Killer App for AR/VR,” moderator Ariella Lehrer of HitPoint Studios stated that a “killer app” would be defined as any app that moves hardware units. That brought a wince from Needham & Company’s Laura Martin who objected that money, not hardware, is the metric to look at. Martin added that hardware sales don’t take into account the fact that so much AR will be done on a smartphone rather than a game console. “Because it uses your smartphone, AR will get faster adoption,” she suggested. Read more

In a session on the future of mobility/transportation, speakers from several companies described the tipping point of the impact of technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Deloitte’s Allan Cook spoke about how AR/VR can be used to appeal to a younger generation loathe to enter a car dealership. “The AR/VR glasses are here now and they’re affordable,” he said. “It really helps your customers visualize what they’re seeing and give them an immersive experience.” Read more

Cambridge Consultants has trained artificial intelligence to reconstruct images from a highly distorted image or video feed in real time that is the AI’s best guess of what the source image originally looked like. The unique approach of their DeepRay product involves recognizing and correcting for a wide universe of distortion patterns. Cambridge Consultants’ first clients are self-driving car companies concerned with accurate object and risk detection, but DeepRay could also have a number of entertainment industry technical and story applications. Read more

Netflix recently named Spencer Neumann as its new chief financial officer. He faces the unenviable task of convincing investors that the path of investing immense sums of money into original content to grow subscriptions and profits will eventually pay off. Co-founder/chief executive Reed Hastings and chief content officer Ted Sarandos have driven the current strategy relying on original content, which is aimed at battling rivals such as Amazon, Hulu and HBO. They will continue to lead business and content strategy. Read more

CES 2019, which calls itself the largest and most influential tech event in the world — “where the entire technology ecosystem gathers to conduct business, launch products, build brands and partner to solve some of today’s most pressing societal challenges” — gets underway today with a full day of conference sessions and media briefings before the millions of square feet of exhibit space opens on Tuesday, January 8. CTA, owner of the show, highlighted a number of key sessions and exhibit marketplaces that visitors to CES may want not want to miss and our team will cover this week. Read more