Once again this year, it was impossible to escape the French presence at CES in Las Vegas, with its 160 companies, including 66 start-ups, grouped together under the French Tech label and led by Emmanuel Macron and Axelle Lemaire. But what really happened from 6 to 9 January in the gaming capital of the world?
The 2016 edition is more of a transition.
Transition because CES is no longer just an acronym with no real meaning, the association that has supported it since its origins - the CEA for Consumer Electronics Association - is now called the CTA for Consumer Technology Association ... but the show is not renamed CTS - Consumer Technology Show - for all that!
It's about time, because it was the car manufacturers who pulled out all the stops, with keynotes right from the start, notably Ford announcing a partnership with Amazon to promote the Echo system... which today boils down to a small Bluetooth audio speaker; there was also a lot of talk about Sync 3, but here too, we were left wanting more.
More than in the field of connected cars, it was in the field of electric cars that the announcements were made, in particular with Volkswagen taking advantage of the show to try and regain its virginity after the scandals at the end of 2015; and Chevrolet, whose latest model is expected to have a range of 200 miles.
In the end, the real innovations came from the old consumer electronics sector, in a nod to the show's name change, with large-format Oled screens for PCs from Lenovo and televisions from LG. Samsung, meanwhile, continued its foray into the kitchen with a fridge whose door is a gigantic touch screen.
The result is a strange sense of déjà vu or gadgetry, depending on the new features on offer.
We've already seen this in drones, even though the latest model from Parrot looks more like a remote-controlled aircraft than anything we've seen before, and the Chinese company Ehang is planning a drone capable of carrying humans - which is against the law in countries like France.
We've already seen this with Withings Thermo, the connected thermometer that's taking its place in the bathroom alongside the scales of 2015, and while we wait for ...
Gadget certainly with olfactory alarm clock of the young Guillaume Rolland, finalist of the 2014 edition of Google Science Fair, available in the second quarter for 99 euros ... to which you will have to add 10 euros for the various odors allowing 30 alarm clocks (price of the kit of 2).
When we look at the potential customers for all these products, apart from the geeks who are prepared to spend a fortune to test all the new products, interest in connected objects remains very limited: nobody really understands yet what it's all going to be used for, and the only certainty is that there's really no rush to equip ourselves with expensive gadgets, the price of which will inevitably fall in the years to come.
