Chinese firms gaining momentum at CES

By Homeric de Sarthe

Chinese companies were definitively present at the CES 2018.

For those who have been attending the convention for the past few years, you could remember the time the Chinese were at CES as suppliers or manufacturer. They were located at the end of each hall and had their booth with a table and four chairs to meet with potential buyers and to seek new products to copy.

A staff member tries to catch a fish in his vision with a Qian immersion AR device produced by Chinese company Realmax at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the United States, Jan. 10, 2018. [Photo: Xinhua]

Well, times are changing. Chinese companies are In The House!

When you were visiting the Central Hall, you couldn’t miss the Big Guys. ZTE, Huawei, Alibaba, TCL and others had gigantic booths. They were massive by their sizes and staffed enough to answer any questions you may have.

Huawei stand was presenting the new Huawei Mate 10 that was the primary focus of the company CEO Richard Yu during his keynote and Alibaba stand was showcasing the hub of the future for cities and consumers, focusing on making our journey has citizen and shoppers always better. 

It was indeed convincing and impressive, especially when you know that they are not technologies or innovations that they want to develop and implement, but solutions that are already available.

Enough with the big guys, let’s focus on the Chinese startups and factories that were attending CES 2018.

South China with cities like Shenzhen, Dongguan, Guangzhou were displaying all kind of hardware’s. From cameras’, to smartwatch’s, lots of VR/AR headsets, gaming accessories and sound systems (earphones, speakers, etc.). 

Going at the REALIS stand, you could get equipped with a VR headset, backpack and two gloves to enter an immersive and challenging Snowball fight! 

The hardware accelerator HAX, located in Shenzhen, was also displaying innovative products, not only made in China but also designed and created in China by Chinese startups.

Mobility was also a hot topic, except that the companies were mainly focusing on improving the existing, such as electric bikes, electric skateboards and hover boards, not creating new transportation vehicles like they did at CES 2017 with the flying transportation drone.

On the software side, Artificial Intelligence, image and face recognition, tracking cameras, were all very present. Although there were some good ideas, couldn’t see any solution ready to be scaled up.

The most important point to be made, is that this year more than any previous years at CES, Chinese companies were attending to present their own products and solutions not as suppliers or manufacturers, but as brands.

Tremendous improvement has been made in terms of products quality and design, and also in terms of communication and how to present themselves. 

The booths were attractive with an “in house” design, many “foreigners” (to ensure perfect English speaking, and credibility sort of speak) were recruited for the convention, and its only by checking closely the company address on the business cards that you will discover the company being located in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Ningbo or any other location across China. 

It will be interesting to keep a close eye on the Chinese companies attending the CES for years to come. If improvements continue to be made, classical criticizes will disappear, admiration will emerge and copy of Chinese products will begin.

Let’s make a point, the bike sharing business created by companies like Ofo and Mobike in China, is being copied and new companies are created to compete with the Chinese on the European market.

(Homeric de Sarthe is an entrepreneur & intrapreneur based in France)