Close-up & Social at CES

I just returned from CES. The trip was inconsequential except for the 16 taxis, 12 buses, 4 planes, and at least 2 pairs of shoes. I figured I walked about 30 miles, shook at least 100 hands, and actually handled 47 of the 50 tablets that were supposed to be at the show. Or was that 70?

I loved every minute of CES but wondered why I bothered, especially after reading ReadWriteWeb (RWW) about who came out on top at the show, using social media statistics furnished by RowFeeder. This social monitoring service kept track of brands mentioned during the last few months and compared them with mentions on Facebook and Twitter during CES. And the winner is ...

Motorola, that increased its presence by 250%.  RWW suggests that the Motorola Zoom tablet, running on Android 3,0 (Honeycomb) is the primary reason for the ascension. The Zoom also won the Best of CES award, followed by the Blackberry Playbook and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

This is hardly an exact science. In terms of Share of Voice Blackberry saw an slight uptick, followed by Android and Windows Phone. The iPhone (iOS) slipped slightly but of course Apple wasn't at the show, except in every other conversation. And a few days after the show the Verizon iPhone was front-and-center.

As RWW noted perhaps the most useful detail in this data is that the tablet category, unlike the announcements made about the e-reader category in 2010, is indeed a robust sector with a number of distinct offerings that might be able to compete with Apple. My unofficial Share of Crowd booth estimates support this view. Fueling this optimism was the fact that Android was everywhere, from top-line tablets to countless smartphones.

Tablets were the talk of the show but Android was the fuel.