January is always a bumper month for gadgets. There’s the inevitable orgy at the altar of CES, and almost always a major Apple announcement. This year Google have also slipped in early with their Nexus One Android phone.
CES
As is customary, you’ll want to follow the big USA tech blogs for your CES coverage. There’s no way I’m ever going to keep up, unless I developed some method to automatically post press releases from my email to this blog. I would caution you that the majority of CES coverage is a torpid melange of pointless incremental product updates and banal releases. Exhibit A: Sony have announced no less than twelve compact digital cameras. Perhaps some consumer expert at Sony has decided to target the buried-by-cameras fetishist market segment in 2010?
There is one small shining light out of CES 2010: the Parrot Ardrone. Just watch this video:
Apple iTablet
Either Apple is about to pull off the biggest jape in consumer electronics history, or they’re announcing a tablet-like computer on or about the 27th or January. Stay tuned.
Google Nexus One
In an utterly different style to Apple, Google’s Nexus One phone was leaked far and wide when they gave one to every Google staffer back in December. This week they officially announced the phone’s release in the USA, with hints at an imminent European release. Don’t hold your breath for a New Zealand release, but there’s nothing stopping you getting a mate to buy one in the USA then using it on Vodafone’s network.
success.