Holiday season is over, and it's time for the Consumer Electronics Expo (CES) in Las Vegas again. From January 10th to January 13th (press events already scheduled around January 9th) the biggest consumer electronics and digital lifestyle companies will showcase their newest innovations in Las Vegas, NV. Popular technology sites are already buzzing with speculations and predictions: What are the hot new trends shown at CES? New feature-rich smartphones, sleek tablets and "UltraBooks" rank among the top trends spotted by Engadget and The Verge.

Smartphones...

The smartphone space right now seems very intransparent right now. At first let's look at the broad statistics. Well it seems that iOS devices / iPhones and Android devices / Android activations show a head to head race. Whether you trust the independent figures provided by Google or Apple.. either one shows iOS in the lead (i.e. "devices sold during the Christmas period") or Android in the lead (i.e. "number of daily android activations worldwide").Android and iOS is the way to go if you would like to employ a state of the art smartphone. However do we really expect significant announcements in that space? I would predict: a couple of new Samsung devices, maybe news from LG and HTC for Android but not much to be expected. Recently we have seen the Samsung Google Galaxy Nexus - which seems to be the Android flagship for a month to come.A couple of tech-sites predict that Nokia and Microsoft may have announcements in tow. I would say: look at Microsoft's recent idea to stay away from CES in the future. Thus Microsoft most likely sticks to their approach: announce the big news in special events not on a big show like CES.

Tablets...

This category is easy. In the light of a potential new iPad (3) with an HD retina display - there will not be many exciting tablet news. We will see the rise and fall of dozens of cheap android devices.The potentially most exciting announcement may have already occurred at CES unveiled a pre-event leading up to CES. The "one laptop per child" project showed (via suppliers) their new "hundred dollar" tablet. An exciting new device with a very modular structure which can be used in remote locations (via manual charge or solar charge) to help teach kids.

UltraBooks...

I have always been in love with Apple's interpretation of an ultra-usable & ultra-portable Laptop.  Now finally via Intel's "UltraBook" campaign the PC market is trying to catch up. With exciting feature ideas like "resume", like push-email / push-updates even if the device is sleeping etc. Intel throws in some excellent ideas. Up to now we have not seen the device portfolio that is really exciting us. So let's see what the big manufacturers like HP, Samsung, Acer, Lenovo will have in tow for us.

Wrap-Up

It is definitely an exciting time. Although one cannot deny the fact that a big show is mostly interesting for the people on the ground and for real life networking. In terms of product announcements the producers seem to get a bit more cautious - and many of the big players may rely on their own "campus" events (i.e. Apple, Microsoft). So use the links below and keep an eye on the biggest electronics show in the world and let us know in comments what your most exciting news from CES 2012 have been.[gigya width="400" height="248" src="http://apps.cooliris.com/embed/cooliris.swf?t=1307582197" quality="high" flashvars="feed=api%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2F%3Fuser%3D21045961%40N03&backgroundcolor=%23FFFFFF&style=light&glowcolor=%23000000&numrows=4&showembed=false&showchrome=false" wmode="opaque" allowfullscreen="true" ]The official CES flickr stream...Live CES2012 Twitter stream...Live Trendsmap for #CES2012...