Orange County technology companies are gearing up for this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where many will launch new products while others pitch new partners and investors.
Chipmaker Broadcom Corp. and flat TV designer and seller Vizio Inc.—both based in Irvine and regular CES exhibitors—view the world’s largest gadget fest as a chance to roll out their latest product road maps.
The influential four-day event provides an opportunity for Waltham, Mass.-based defense specialist Raytheon Co. and its networked communications division in Fullerton to show off new systems-integration innovations for the consumer market.
Relatively recent startups such as Santa Ana-based AViiQ Inc. and XPAL Power Inc. of Costa Mesa will seek a bit of the show spotlight as well—no small feat considering the scope and breadth of the event.
“We know there’s going to be a lot of competition and a lot of press,” AViiQ cofounder Alan Yeung said. “We have high expectations at CES.”
AViiQ will use its inaugural booth at CES to exhibit a handful of portable products geared to ease travel for electronics junkies and business passengers.
Among them: a new leather iPod case; a slim, foldable surge protector; a set of small, USB cables with interchangeable heads; and a power station that allows charging in flight, or as it’s being marketed, a “toiletry bag for your mobile electronics.”
“We really want to bring innovative products to the market,” Yeung said. “We want them to be truly portable and take up as little space and weight as possible.”
The company’s laptop stand, which weighs in at less than an ounce and folds up like origami, has sold more than 20,000 units since debuting online two year ago. It sells for $60 to $80, depending on style and color schemes.
iLounge
AViiQ is sharing a booth at the sprawl-ing iLounge Pavilion, a 75,000-square- foot space at the Las Vegas Convention Center with five other companies showing products related to the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
The booth in a show zone sponsored by iLounge.com, an Irvine-based website that tracks and covers all things emanating from Apple Inc.’s headquarters in Cupertino. The iLounge website features news, blogs, reviews, tips and other i-related information, generating 20 million-plus monthly hits.
More than 20,000 products in total will launch this week at the tech industry’s seminal annual gathering, which draws some 140,000 attendees from 140 countries.
Orange County will be well represented, with more than 100 local companies showcasing products and services. That’s about 12% of the more than 800 companies from tech-heavy California, which sends more companies than any other state to CES.
In all, more than 2,700 companies around the globe will demonstrate products and technologies in almost 2 million square feet of space.
Pushing Powerskin
XPAL, a local unit of Taiwan-based TennRich International, will hold court in a suite at The Las Vegas Hotel & Casi-no, formerly the Las Vegas Hilton, demonstrating its products and market reach to potential and existing customers and partners.
“We hope to further solidify current partnerships by expanding product lines, and we hope to forge new partnerships,” Executive Vice President David Becker said.
The company, which sees about $10 million in annual revenue, is the U.S. sales and marketing arm for the Powerskin brand of rechargeable battery packs used for portable consumer products, such as smart phones, game players, laptops, tablets, and Bluetooth headsets, among others.
XPAL, which has been funded through its own revenue stream and TennRich, is looking to raise $5 million to $8 million for branding and growth initiatives. The company has partners including Apple, Dallas-based AT&T Inc. and Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile USA Inc., a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG.
Raytheon Showcase
Raytheon will showcase a tracking system that allows users to communicate and view locations through a secure mobile device or tablet. The product, developed in connection with a military project, was created at Raytheon’s Fullerton campus and runs on Apple or Android operating systems.
“You could be a bunch of cops working undercover on surveillance and no one would know,” Raytheon spokesperson Mike Bostic said.
Raytheon, which employs about 1,100 people in Fullerton and 170 in Brea, has a defense-sector corporate history but and consumer ambitions.
“Raytheon is not a military company,” Bostic said. “We’re a future-based IT company. We can take an old legacy system and link it with new technology, and that’s what we hope to show at CES.”
