Intel introduced it's Smartphone platform reference design and it was Lenovo that will be the first to use this design in their K800 handset. The most interesting thing about the announcement was that the phone was for only Chinese markets. It then made me realize that China had now become the ideal target market for manufacturers as their rising middle class combined with their huge population makes market penetration there a must.

With that in mind I spent my day visiting the booths and hob knobbing with representatives from the largest handset manufacturers in China. First was Korean manufacturer K-Touch, who are using CES to introduce a line of handsets using a Chinese developed OS based on cloud-computing called Aliyun. Most of their designs used dual-core processors and boasted performance that rivaled larger manufacturers like HTC and Samsung.

K-Touch taking me through a demonstration of the Aliyun OS

Next on my agenda was ZTE. ZTE’s booth was actually split in the middle with one side representing their feature phones and handsets available to the Chinese market and the other side showing their aggressive product roadmap for North America. On the North American side, Smartphoness using the Windows 7 and Android OS figured prominently. Their modestly-priced tablets look to take advantage of a rising market segment of customers who want a tablet with some basic features, but not all the bells and whistles that drive up the price.

ZTE’s line of handsets for 2012

The last stop on my Chinese manufacturer tour was the largest manufacturer based in the Eastern Nation – Huawei. Huawei decided to go big for CES, with one of the largest, booths in the South Hall. Huawei introduced their entire product catalogue for China and North America. The Huawei Ascend P1 (introduced during their press event two days ago) took center stage as numerous Huawei representatives took their time with visitors to show off their newest smartphone. Huawei is looking to make a big splash in North America in 2012 and establish themselves as a player in the portable connectivity market space. This booth was a good start.

However, I would suggest that they rethink their marketing slogan…

Wait…What?

My general observation from visiting these booths were that Chinese manufacturers were ready to evolve from the feature phone business to the Smartphone set, matching the evolution in buying tastes by their largest market, Chinese customers. That sentiment was shared by a manager of the China region at Nokia. He stated how Nokia (the overall leader of sales in China) has to continue supporting customers with low-cost feature phones but that the growth of that market and the growth of the Smartphone market in that region are going in opposite directions. What manufacturers like Huawei, ZTE and others are also recognizing is that their Smartphones must offer comparable specifications in terms of processor power and feature set with their North American and European brethren. The Smartphone battle will be very interesting in 2012.

I had a chance to visit other booths throughout the day but the most interesting booth I wanted to share with you was Motorola’s.

Motorola used CES to introduce a line of products that would appeal to both consumers and business enterprise. The XYBoard series of tablets, the Motorola Droid 4, the Atrix 2, and the Photon were unveiled at CES. Building off the popularity of previous generations of the Droid and Atrix, these new models, along with the Photon, were all compatible with Motorola’s new docking keyboard. They also offered new security features that would appeal to IT departments such as certificate-based matching, applications management and full ADS security with FIPS 140 compliancy. Motorola believes these features put their security level on par with that of RIM’s Blackberry line of handsets. Speaking to one of their product managers, Motorola is well aware of customer dissatisfaction with Blackberry, and they want to offer an alternative that appeal to IT managers and the employees that have to use them.

The Atrix 2 docked in the keyboard accessory

The Motorola Photon dual-core Smartphone

I closed off my day by visiting the Gaming Zone. I wanted to see the latest in videogame technology and some of the new titles coming out in 2012. I’m just like any other engineer in that I still hold Mario and Luigi as two of the greatest influences in my life.

The legend himself

My Day 4 experience wasn’t as hectic as the previous day but I still managed to visit some key manufacturers and get a better understanding of what lies ahead product-wise in 2012. Tomorrow is my last day at CES before I get mercifully replaced by another representative from UBM TechInsights. Hopefully, I make as large a dent in my list of vendors to see as possible. Don’t forget to follow me at EE Times at CES, the video footage of the show really highlights some of the cool products that are being showcased.