CES Best of Innovations: Nod to Trinkets, Blow to Custom

Julie- I’m not sure if you are aware that CES doesn’t announce all of the winners at this time.  If the manufacturer dosen’t want to reveal the product until the show, then the announcement is held until the press event on January 5 in Las Vegas.  Maybe some of the missing products will have revelance to our industry.

Matt—Are you sure about that? Seems all of the finalists were written up (with images). Why not just declare the winning companies in all categories, but keep the details quiet? Or at least note that other categories will be announced?

In any case, I do think it’s odd that there are 6 categories for vehicle accessories and only one category for video displays, for example.

How about HAI? Are they not a CE company as well?

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) awarded HAI’s Cellular Communication Center with a 2010 CES Innovations Design and Engineering Award in the Wireless Handsets Accessories product category.

The C3 is a wildly advanced product that allows two-way communication between monitoring stations and homeowners where a landline is not available, or if the existing landline is cut or otherwise unavailable.

I suppose this is just a “trinket”.

Hi, Greg—This story is about the “Best Of” winners, not the finalists. HAI was a finalist—congratulations!

Unless you’re only referring to “Best Of” and not simply Honoree award winners.  Also, I know for a fact many CE companies submitted products.  CES even extended their deadline to allow for additional entries.

I believe that Matt is right. “(All embargos will be honored)” is the quote from the email.

I am certain of my facts.  If the company asks not to be revealed until CES then CEA will hold the information and press release information confidential until Jan.5.

Julie:

A quick point about these awards and in all fairness awards in general.  As recipients of about a dozen Innovation Awards (last year our TPA-1 won here), as well as CEDIA’s, yours and theirs, I think I can speak with some perspective.

Entering a product for an award isn’t what it used to be.  Nowadays, most awards come with hefty submission fee – some start quite fairly at around $250 (for members who exhibit & make the early bird deadline) but more typically cost between $500 - $1000 per submission.  This doesn’t include the associated costs of creating the submissions.  If you have multiple products that are worthy of getting recognition, you could be spending thousands of dollars for just one award.  There are at least 8-10 contests each year that I can think of.  If I wanted to enter all of our new note worthy products into all the possible contests out there, the entry fees alone would cost tens of thousands of dollars each year.

The fact that awards have become a revenue generator for the groups that run them, in my opinion taints the awards process but not the way you would think.  The judging process is often beyond reproach.  Instead, the problem lies with those who actually enter submissions.  Companies that view this as a much smaller line item might enter multiple submissions while companies that figure that the money is better spent elsewhere don’t submit anything.  All too often, the “best of something” isn’t necessarily really the best product in that category. 

I will be the first to admit that we have boycotted several award contests simply because it would have cost us thousands of dollars to enter the categories we felt we would need to be visible in.  Here it was easier to simply skip the whole thing.  In over twenty years of doing this I can tell you that awards are nice to have but they don’t really sell the product – at least in custom installation.  In our industry, products are judged daily and the “best something” really needs to be earned because if it isn’t, then the next job will not include it.

CES has become a joke to CE Pro’s… does anyone important still go? The last year I went was 2004. I had to walk miles through computer parts, car audio, and other “garbage” before I even found CE Pro “stuff”. CEDIA is a better fit for us. I think if CES wasn’t in Vegas we would have abandoned it alltogether a long time ago.