CES 2026 – Day 3 – Back in the Open

China is back in full force

• China has gone from being absent in 2023 to being in disguise in 2024 and has made a full return in 2025 in a sign of just how important exports are to keep the Chinese economy going.
• Going off the beaten track at CES shows that in addition to the North Hall, the South Hall is now almost entirely dominated by technology companies from China.
• The robots that dominate the North Hall do not strike me as a serious attempt to do more than make a statement, but elsewhere it is another matter entirely.
• The South Hall is replete with device companies, exporters, and component sellers, with the far end of it not dissimilar to the component markets that one can find in Shenzhen.
• 5 years ago was the last time that the South Hall was full of Chinese companies, and the contrast between then and now is substantial.
• In 2019, China offered an almost infinite number of crudely made devices such as smart lights, sockets, speakers, headphones, and so on that were almost always white and almost all looked the same.
• In 2025, the top half of the South Hall looks almost indistinguishable from the other halls in that the Chinese devices look nice, come in many different colours and appear to be well made.
• Furthermore, there are many novel, if somewhat impractical form factors clearly demonstrating that China has learned how to design consumer electronics and make them to a much better standard of quality.
• This is yet another extension of what China has learned from Apple and Tesla, and in some cases, they make the Western versions look dated and unattractive.
• Irrespective of the geopolitical climate, this is a recognition that China needs the export market to support the weak domestic consumption at home, which is showing little sign of getting much better.

Smart Glasses – Almost as popular as robots

• Global interest in smart glasses has continued to grow as the advent of AI has finally made the user experience delightful as opposed to frustrating.
• This, combined with the trend of alliances with glass frame brands, has meant that demand for these products is growing by more than 100%, albeit from a tiny base.
• This is evident on the floor, where every major consumer electronics maker has a device or a prototype to sell and where the existing players have redoubled their efforts.
• This goes all the way from the genuine products on display from Meta and Luxottica to the not-so-genuine Oakley knock-offs that are to be found in abundance in the South Hall.
• Furthermore, the queues to test these products were some of the longest that I have seen this week, outside of the 30+ minute tailback on the Hyundai stand to view the Atlas robot.
• This goes hand in hand with steady advancements in the quality, brightness and size of the displays that can be crammed into a pair of glasses which means that the sector is likely to have another good year in 2026.
• This is not a sign of the take off of the Metaverse, but more a recognition that a good quality voice-based user interface has enabled a new category of smartphone peripherals.
• It is possible that the Metaverse may eventually evolve from glasses taking digital relevance from the smartphone, but it is going to take a long time.
• In the meantime, the success of glasses will depend on how useful agents running on smartphones and being accessed on glasses can really be.
• With Google and others coming into this market in 2026, we will get some good indications over the next 12 months.