Long billed as a manifestation of augmented reality (AR), the field of smart glasses has seen a wide range of products emerging on the market over the years. Notable products include the Ray-Ban Meta collection (a collaboration with Meta Platforms), Microsoft’s Hololens, and Vuzix’s entire product line. A survey at CES this year indicated the market of head-worn wearable computers is by no means a mature market. Our team found a few companies demonstrating their latest offerings. The principals of these companies believe their innovations differentiate from the current field with their own paths for solving specific use cases. Continue reading CES: Companies Present AR Use Cases for New Smart Glasses

Mastercard Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Raja Rajamannar is quite clear on his opinion of current marketing practices. “The strategies to get the right consumer insights are totally flawed,” he said. “Every single aspect of marketing has to be reinvented.” In a CES panel on “Revolutionizing Customer Engagement,” Rajamannar and Netflix Vice President of Consumer Products Josh Simon described their partnership efforts to create experiences that engage the fanbase. The discussion, led by influencer.com Chief Executive Ben Jeffries, first focused on why traditional marketing strategies are failing. Continue reading CES: Netflix and Mastercard Partner on ‘Experience’ Marketing

Wearable technology startup Halliday has unveiled smart glasses that beam images directly to the wearer’s eyes. At CES Unveiled, the Shenzhen-based company previewed AI-powered eyewear that that projects images directly into eyes instead of onto a lens and is controlled by a smart ring. The “minimal optical module projection technology,” coined DigiWindow, is being called first-of-its-kind. The device has a “proactive AI assistant” that reacts to its environment without being asked. The frames come in matte black or tortoiseshell and have lenses that can accommodate prescriptions. Continue reading CES: Halliday’s AI Smart Glasses Project Directly into the Eye

The Eureka Park section at CES 2025 in Las Vegas is an exhibition area dedicated to thousands of startups and early-stage products from across the globe. Our reporting team visited the space organized specifically for Japanese startups and discovered a few that are developing innovative technologies that could potentially be applied to 3D computer graphics modeling, XR, and gaming. Among the standouts were Tokyo-based CalTa that developed the digital twin platform Trancity — and Japanese telecom giant NTT Docomo’s exhibit of its ongoing Feel Tech system. Continue reading CES: Japanese Startups Showcase 3D Modeling, XR, Gaming

Israeli startup PxE Holographic Imaging has developed a drop-in replacement sensor for any camera that holographically captures depth information without lidar or other hardware. Or more specifically, it augments any existing sensor with this capability, so any existing sensor OEM’s product can be adapted. Imagine face ID without an IR projector and sensor, your videoconference camera able to send a 3D image, or volumetric capture suddenly becoming more affordable. Extraordinarily, the physics appears to check out, and PxE demonstrated the technology to us at short- and room-size range in their CES suite at The Venetian Las Vegas. Continue reading CES: PxE Develops Camera Sensor That Captures Depth Info

During the COVID-19 pandemic, gaming enjoyed a tremendous surge in popularity — a high point that has suffered somewhat of a dip in the last year. However, gaming executives are bullish on their 2025 prospects. “During the pandemic we saw double digit growth in mobile, PC and console,” explained Sensor Tower SVP of Gaming & Entertainment Chirag Ambwani. “And now, in the last six months, we’re seeing gaming coming back to growth after that slight dip.” Better, some trends are highlighting the growing importance of gaming, suggest the experts. United Talent Agency’s Michelle Kim moderated a CES panel on Gamevertising to address the latest trends. Continue reading CES: In-Game Sponsorships, Gamified Promos Build Brands

At CES 2025’s opening session on Tech Trends, futurist Brian Comiskey, the Consumer Technology Association’s senior director of innovation and trends, forecasted record retail revenues of $537 billion in 2025, representing a growth in hardware, software and services. He also enumerated the growth of AI as a continuing trend. Fueling this record growth is the dominance of Gen Z, which he dubbed “the first true digital natives.” Comiskey noted, however, that the incoming government proposal to establish tariffs threaten U.S. purchasing power for technology products. Continue reading CES: CTA Futurist Predicts the Impact of Latest Tech Trends

Google has unveiled Android XR, an operating system for computers and smart glasses powered by Google’s Gemini AI large language model. Samsung confirmed that it will release an extended reality headset that runs on Android XR sometime in 2025. Samsung worked closely with Google and Gemini throughout 2023, leading up to the Galaxy S24 series of smartphones that debuted at CES 2024 last January. Google announced the release of the Android XR SDK Developer Preview kit so new apps can be built and existing ones ported over to the new platform to support Samsung’s new headset and other devices. Continue reading Android XR Powered by Gemini OS for Samsung’s 2025 Headset

LG Display has unveiled what it is calling “the world’s first stretchable display,” a screen capable of elongated up to 50 percent, “the highest rate in the industry.” At LG Sciencepark in Seoul this month, the company demonstrated the new panel at a meeting of more than 100 South Korean industry, academia and research stakeholders involved in a stretchable display national project. The free-form prototype has a 12-inch screen that can be folded and twisted and stretched up to 18 inches while continuing to deliver resolution of 100ppi and full RGB color by using a silicon substrate and special wiring structure. Continue reading LG Says Its New Flexible Screen Can Stretch Up to 50 Percent

DeepL, a German company that gained a profile with online text translation, has released DeepL Voice, a B2B tool that translates to captions in real time. DeepL Voice debuts in two iterations: DeepL Voice for Meetings, which allows participants to speak in their preferred language while serving colleagues with captions, and DeepL Voice for Conversations, which works on mobile devices, facilitating in-person, one-on-one conversations “with customers, colleagues or anyone else, in the language that works best for them,” the company explains, noting that real-time voice translation offers specific challenges. Continue reading DeepL Voice Translates 33 Languages to Captions in Real Time

Revenue reached an all-time high for Apple’s most recent quarter as iPhone sales experienced an uptick due in part to consumer excitement for the arrival of Apple Intelligence, the company’s heavily advertised set of AI tools. Total sales reached $94.9 billion for the quarter, up 6 percent year-over-year and exceeding the $94.5 billion that financial analysts had predicted. The company’s iPhone business reported sales of $46.2 billion, following disappointing consecutive quarters in the first half of the year. The AI boom resulted in strong quarters for other Big Tech leaders including Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Microsoft. Continue reading Jump in iPhone Business Results in Record Quarter for Apple

Netflix wants to make viewing a more memorable and interactive experience with Moments, a new mobile feature that makes it easy to save, relive and share favorite scenes from movies and series. Launching globally on iOS and coming soon to Android, Moments not only allows you to revisit pivotal plot points, but also lets you restart the film or episode right from that bookmark. Sharing Moments on Instagram, Facebook and other social platforms is reportedly just as easy. You can share a Moment as you create it or, from the My Netflix tab, you can select a scene and tap to share it across all of your platforms. Continue reading Netflix Enables Bookmarking, Sharing of Scenes with Moments

Manufacturers that make Arm chips license tech from British developer Arm Holdings, with the option of licensing Arm’s instruction set to build proprietary CPU designs or licensing one of Arm’s Cortex CPU designs. Amid a legal dispute that started two years ago over Qualcomm’s $1.4 billion acquisition of silicon design firm Nuvia, Arm has given its longtime partner Qualcomm a 60-day notice of its license cancellation. If the two companies do not come to an agreement in that time, Qualcomm will have to cease manufacturing Arm chips, which could have a significant impact on the global supply chain, Qualcomm’s revenue, and smartphone makers that use Qualcomm chips. Continue reading Arm Cancels Qualcomm Architecture License in Legal Dispute

Qualcomm has unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which the company says has “the world’s fastest mobile CPU,” a custom version of the second generation Qualcomm Oryon. The platform is purpose-built to power on-device generative AI, “built to handle the complexities of multi-modal AI seamlessly while prioritizing privacy,” per Qualcomm. Smartphone brands and OEMs including Asus, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, Opposite, RealMe, Samsung, Vivo and Xiaomi are onboard to launch devices powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, starting before the end of the year, according to Qualcomm’s announcement. Continue reading Qualcomm Says Snapdragon 8 Elite Has ‘Fastest Mobile CPU’

Samsung is releasing a Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition that will initially debut in South Korea on October 25 at a price of roughly $2,000. This thinner, lighter new Z Fold sports larger displays and a superior 200MP camera system, an AI-friendly 16GB of RAM and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, though by the time it debuts in the U.S. it may have the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite, which Qualcomm says will start showing up in products by the end of this year. Samsung is positioning the exclusive limited run as “a thank-you” to local customers. There are rumors of a possible China release forthcoming. Continue reading Samsung’s New Galaxy Z Fold Releasing Only in South Korea