What to Expect from CES 2026, the Annual Show of All Things Tech?

DeCloak security privacy software is demonstrated on a California Robotics robot during CES Unveiled ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 4, 2026. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)

Asharq Al Awsat

07:46-5 January 2026 AD ـ 17 Rajab 1447 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

07:46-5 January 2026 AD ـ 17 Rajab 1447 AH

What to Expect from CES 2026, the Annual Show of All Things Tech?

With the start of the New Year squarely behind us, it's once again time for the annual CES trade show to shine a spotlight on the latest tech companies plan on offering in 2026.

The multi-day event, organized by the Consumer Technology Association, kicks off this week in Las Vegas, where advances across industries like robotics, healthcare, vehicles, wearables, gaming and more are set to be on display.

Artificial intelligence will be anchored in nearly everything, again, as the tech industry explores offerings consumers will want to buy. AI industry heavyweight Jensen Huang will be taking the stage to showcase Nvidia's latest productivity solutions, and AMD CEO Lisa Su will keynote to “share her vision for delivering future AI solutions.” Expect AI to come up in other keynotes, like from Lenovo's CEO, Yuanqing Yang.

The AI industry is out in full force tackling issues in healthcare, with a particular emphasis on changing individual health habits to treat conditions — such as Beyond Medicine's prescription app focused on a particular jaw disorder — or addressing data shortages in subjects such as breast milk production.

Expect more unveils around domestic robots too. Korean tech giant LG already has announced it will show off a helper bot named “ CLOiD,” which allegedly will handle a range of household tasks. Hyundai also is announcing a major push on robotics and manufacturing advancements. Extended reality, basically a virtual training ground for robots and other physical AI, is also in the buzz around CES.

In 2025, more than 141,000 attendees from over 150 countries, regions, and territories attended the CES. Organizers expect around the same numbers for this year’s show, with more than 3,500 exhibitors across the floor space this week.

The AP spoke with CTA Executive Chair and CEO Gary Shapiro about what to expect for CES 2026. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What are the main themes we can expect this week? Well, we have a lot at this year's show.

Obviously, using AI in a way that makes sense for people. We’re seeing a lot in robotics. More robots and humanoid-looking robots than we’ve ever had before.

We also see longevity in health, there’s a lot of focus on that. All sorts of wearable devices for almost every part of the body. Technology is answering healthcare’s gaps very quickly and that’s great for everyone.

Mobility is big with not only self-driving vehicles but also with boats and drones and all sorts of other ways of getting around. That’s very important.

And of course, content creation is always very big.

Is 2026 the year we finally see humanoid robots in people’s homes? You are seeing humanoid robots right now. It sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.

But yes, there are more and more humanoid robots. And when we talk about CES 5, 10, 15, 20 years now, we’re going to see an even larger range of humanoid robots.

Obviously, last year we saw a great interest in them. The number one product of the show was a little robotic dog that seems so life-like and fun, and affectionate for people that need that type of affection.

But of course, the humanoid robots are just one aspect of that industry. There’s a lot of specialization in robot creation, depending on what you want the robot to do. And robots can do many things that humans can’t.

Will we start seeing more innovative use of AI tools in entertainment? AI is the future of creativity.

Certainly AI itself may be arguably creative, but the human mind is so unique that you definitely get new ideas that way. So I think the future is more of a hybrid approach, where content creators are working with AI to craft variations on a theme or to better monetize what they have to a broader audience.

Any interesting AI-powered devices or services that consumers will want to buy? We’re seeing all sorts of different devices that are implementing AI. But we have a special focus at this show, for the first time, on the disability community. Verizon set this whole stage up where we have all different ways of taking this technology and having it help people with disabilities and older people.

Are you concerned about a potential AI bubble? Well, there’s definitely no bubble when it comes to what AI can do. And what AI can do is perform miracles and solve fundamental human problems in food production and clean air and clean water.

Obviously in healthcare, it’s gonna be overwhelming.

But this was like the internet itself. There was a lot of talk about a bubble, and there actually was a bubble. The difference is that in late 1990s there were basically were no revenue models. Companies were raising a lot of money with no plans for revenue.

These AI companies have significant revenues today, and companies are investing in it.

What I’m more concerned about, honestly, is not Wall Street and a bubble. Others can be concerned about that. I’m concerned about getting enough energy to process all that AI. And at this show, for the first time, we have a Korean company showing the first ever small-scale nuclear-powered energy creation device. We expect more and more of these people rushing to fill this gap because we need the energy, we need it clean and we need a kind of all-of-the-above solution.

New ‘Scentronic’ Technology Can Detect and Transmit Aromas Remotely

Ohio State University researcher Chunyu Yang wears a prototype odor generator device which is part of a technology called Scentronic that can detect scents and transmit them remotely, at Columbus, Ohio, on June 13, 2025, in this image released October 21, 2026. (Shaoru Cheng/Handout via Reuters)

11:10-23 October 2026 AD ـ 12 Jumada Al-Ula 1448 AH

New ‘Scentronic’ Technology Can Detect and Transmit Aromas Remotely

People can readily share images and sounds digitally, as evidenced by the billions of smartphones in use globally that often overload the human senses of sight and hearing. But smell generally remains missing from remote communication. That could soon change.

Researchers have developed technology that features an electronic nose that recognizes certain smells, like the distinctive aroma of coffee, and then instructs a small and wearable remote device to release scent molecules matching it. The digital communication can take place at any distance, from across the room to around the world.

"In simple terms, it connects 'smelling something here' with 'recreating the corresponding smell somewhere else,'" said Chunyu Yang, an Ohio State University doctoral student in materials science and engineering and lead author of a study describing the technology published in the journal Science Advances.

"The idea is to add smell to the visual and audio information we already share remotely, making those experiences more engaging," Yang said.

The researchers call this latest development in the field of digital scent technology "Scentronic."

"What makes Scentronic ‌different is that ‌it brings odor sensing and generation together for remote sharing. To the best of our knowledge, ‌our ⁠study is the ⁠first to explore this integration in a compact platform for remote odor sharing," Yang said.

The researchers created an e-nose, a device that uses an array of gas sensors to detect chemical compounds associated with different odors. A machine-learning model then classifies odors that the e-nose has been trained to recognize — cake, coffee and oranges.

The technology uses an online platform to transmit the odor information to a scent generator, which then releases fragrances to recreate the aroma at the receiving end. The scent molecules themselves are not transmitted over the internet.

The e-nose device is roughly 6 inches (15 cm) in diameter and is portable, though not designed to be worn. The researchers developed several versions of ⁠the odor generator, including wristband, necklace and handheld designs.

'EVERYDAY ODORS'

At this point, the e-nose recognizes ‌just the five scents.

"We chose these because they are familiar everyday odors with ‌different scent profiles, making them useful examples for demonstrating the system. We have not yet expanded beyond those categories," Yang said.

"A broader scent library ‌is possible in principle, but an unlimited repertoire is far beyond what we have demonstrated. Recognizing an odor and accurately reproducing ‌it are separate challenges. Covering a useful range of everyday scents is a more realistic goal, although that would still require substantial development," Yang said.

The receiving device cannot recreate every smell Scentronic encounters.

"To support additional odors, we would need to train the electronic nose to recognize them and provide corresponding scented liquids in the odor generator," Yang said.

The researchers see various potential applications for the technology.

"For example, someone could share the scent of ‌a meal with family or friends who live far away. Other potential applications include more immersive virtual and augmented reality experiences and online shopping that allows customers to sample selected scents remotely," ⁠Yang said.

'A RESEARCH PROTOTYPE'

The research ⁠was conducted and the devices developed without the involvement of a company, Yang said.

"At present, this is a research prototype. Moving toward commercialization would require a larger, more diverse training dataset and reliable odor recognition under real-world conditions, where smells often occur in mixtures," Yang said.

"The odor generator would also need further development to support more scents while remaining compact and convenient to use. Other considerations include scent fidelity, refillability, durability, manufacturing costs and the safety of repeated exposure to the scented mist," Yang said.

Smartphones are becoming increasingly capable. Could they in the future incorporate scent technology so that, for instance, a person at a tailgate party before an Ohio State football game could call a friend and share video, audio and the aroma of hot dogs on the grill?

"In principle, a smartphone could connect to a scent-generating accessory. Integrating everything into the phone itself would be more challenging because the scent reservoirs, electronics and atomizers all take up space and add weight. Miniaturization and convenient refilling would be important considerations," Yang said.

"The tailgate example illustrates the idea well. A future system could potentially combine video and audio with a corresponding scent, provided it could recognize the relevant odor and the receiver had a suitable scent formulation available. Our current system has not demonstrated the transmission of a grilling-hot-dog scent or the exact mixture of smells at a tailgate party," Yang said.

Technology

Websites Go Dark as AI Exposes Critical Security Flaws

Computer code is displayed on multiple screens in this illustration taken on October 22, 2026. (Reuters)

08:32-23 October 2026 AD ـ 12 Jumada Al-Ula 1448 AH

Websites Go Dark as AI Exposes Critical Security Flaws

Computer code is displayed on multiple screens in this illustration taken on October 22, 2026. (Reuters)

Governments and companies around the world shut down websites Thursday as they raced to protect themselves from hacks after artificial intelligence uncovered critical flaws in a widely used programming language called PHP.

PHP helps run about 70 percent of the world's websites -- from online stores and news outlets to government services -- according to Wiz Research, one of the cybersecurity firms that found the two flaws.

Created in the early 1990s, PHP originally stood for "personal home page" but now means "hypertext preprocessor" and sits underneath popular web design platforms.

"These findings rank among the most severe vulnerabilities discovered in PHP, and arguably in software history," a Wiz blog post said.

Increasingly powerful AI models can spot weak points in back-end computer code that have gone unnoticed by humans for years.

That has heightened cybersecurity fears, with the number of software vulnerabilities discovered worldwide in 2026 on track to roughly double last year's record total.

- 'Quite devastating' -

PHP programmers released a fix Wednesday, and the US National Security Agency told organizations to patch their sites immediately or pull vulnerable systems offline -- a call echoed by authorities from China to the European Union.

Amazon Threat Intelligence said it had identified a hacking attempt carried out before the PHP security flaws were made public.

"It remains unclear how the actor acquired exploit information," it said, describing the incident as the "targeting of a honeypot" from an anonymized internet connection.

But Ryan Austin, who has worked on PHP issues for cybersecurity firm Calif, told the BBC: "At the moment, it doesn't look like exploitation has taken off or been widespread."

Only sites that run PHP on their own servers are exposed. Many large platforms are built on other programming languages or use operators that could install the fix quickly and were able to stay online.

Rahat Masood, senior lecturer in cybersecurity at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, described the discovery as "quite devastating".

It could allow "attackers to get into your servers without any authorization, without any username or password", she told AFP.

"Once they are in the servers, they can do anything they want" -- from stealing sensitive information to modifying website content -- she added, urging institutions to "take it seriously."

- 'New phase' -

Government agency sites in countries from Australia to Finland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom were among those that went dark. Services from insurance firms, transport operators and media outlets were down for emergency maintenance.

Popular apps, including a Pokemon sleep tracker, were also temporarily taken offline while the fix was implemented, while the foundation that runs Wikipedia warned users they could see outages while it addressed the flaws.

"If you run PHP, it is imperative that you update now," the PHP Foundation, which funds developers working on the language, said in a blog post.

Volker Dusch, a security engineer at the foundation, told the Wall Street Journal it was the most serious problem PHP had faced in more than a decade, comparing it to Heartbleed, a 2014 flaw that set off a worldwide rush to patch.

Security firm Calif found the flaws in August using OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol model, as part of an OpenAI-funded audit of PHP's code.

OpenAI said the discovery "marks a new phase, where AI can find security bugs with internet-scale impact."

Wiz, which is owned by Google, said it found them independently weeks later with help from AI models including Google's Gemini 4 Argon and GPT-5.6 Sol.

The flaws had been reported privately to PHP's developers and kept confidential while a fix was prepared.

- AI fuels urgency -

Details leaked online Tuesday, a day before the planned release of the fix -- prompting the rush to take sites offline before hackers could exploit them.

Steve Kerrison, senior lecturer in cybersecurity at the Singapore campus of James Cook University, told AFP that the fear of hackers using AI to quickly and easily exploit the PHP vulnerabilities had fueled urgency to react.

Larger institutions, from government agencies to news outlets, should be able to fix their websites relatively fast, Kerrison said -- but others may be left vulnerable.

"There are sites, systems and people out there who will have no idea about this and still won't for days, weeks and months," Kerrison warned.

That may include user-run blogs that could be weaponized to spread computer viruses, spam people or distribute malicious content, he said.

Technology

Apple Launches into Foldable Market as iPhone Duo Sales Begin

23 October 2026, China, Hong Kong: The iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable smartphone, is displayed at an Apple Store. (dpa)

07:32-23 October 2026 AD ـ 12 Jumada Al-Ula 1448 AH

Apple Launches into Foldable Market as iPhone Duo Sales Begin

23 October 2026, China, Hong Kong: The iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable smartphone, is displayed at an Apple Store. (dpa)

Sales of Apple's first folding phone, the iPhone Duo, began on Friday, with market watchers betting on whether the device can reinvent the small foldables market in the same way the iPhone did for smartphones.

The Duo's reception could prove an early test for new CEO John Ternus, the former hardware chief who unveiled the phone barely a week after taking charge in September.

It could also have large implications for a niche category in which rivals such as Samsung Electronics and Huawei Technologies have sold premium offerings for several years.

Within minutes of pre-orders opening last Friday, Apple's estimated delivery dates for the Duo had slipped to late January as demand outpaced supply. The US company called the response from customers "nothing short of extraordinary."

In Sydney, the first Apple store to sell the phones on Friday, a queue of customers formed outside before opening at 8 a.m. local time (2100 GMT).

Simon Krishnan, a 48-year-old engineer, paid A$3,899 ($2,734) for a Duo with 512GB memory.

"This is a bit of a luxury item ‌for me, because ‌it's so expensive, but I just think, you know what? Life's too short," he said.

In China, a soft ‌consumer ⁠market combined with ⁠memory costs pushing prices higher has led to six straight quarters of declines in smartphone shipments. Apple's market share, however, has rebounded as some phone buyers trade up to premium devices while others seek value at the lower end of the market, putting pressure on mid-range brands.

Liu Wei, a 26-year-old healthcare professional, already has a foldable phone from Xiaomi, but still queued outside a central Shanghai Apple store from 6 a.m. to get his hands on Apple's first foldable.

"I've used Apple products for many years and I have more trust (in the brand), so I bought one on launch day to try it out," he said.

In Hong Kong, May, 38, who declined to give his full name for privacy reasons, secured a 256GB iPhone Duo, which retails for HK$17,499 ($2,231.73), ⁠during an online pre-sale and aimed to resell the handset for a profit of around HK$4,000: “A few meals' ‌worth of money,” he joked.

MIXED REVIEWS

Early reviews have praised the Duo's design as ‌well as its sturdy and barely visible hinge, a major feat for phones whose prominent creased screen has long been a drawback and potential deterrent for buyers.

But ‌reviewers have said camera compromises, including the absence of a telephoto lens and third-party apps that still need to be reworked for the ‌new display size could disappoint some buyers.

They have also said the Duo in its smaller, folded state is less handy for the litany of quick tasks that most users carry out each day on standard iPhones, with several prominent reviewers recommending against the Duo for many Apple customers.

"It's been a lot of fun trying the Duo out for a week, but it feels like I've gotten to use an extraordinarily polished prototype — not a finished product that I'd ‌want to buy and carry," longtime Apple commentator John Gruber, author of the blog Daring Fireball, wrote in a review.

Tech commentator Marques Brownlee, popularly known as MKBHD, said in a YouTube review that "if you're ⁠just a regular person who doesn't ⁠do much more than texting, social media and browsing here and there, then it is probably a no. But if the $2,000 doesn't mean much to you, and you like the idea, after the learning curve and getting used to not having facial identification, it is a really fun phone."

TOUGH TO FIND

The limited supplies could disappoint Apple fans lining up in front of stores to buy the Duo. Apple told Reuters that walk-in availability would vary by country, with limited stocks in the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico and much of Britain and Europe. In China, France, Hong Kong, India and Japan, units would be available only for customers who had ordered online.

"Foldables have been an established category for years, but adoption has remained relatively limited compared with conventional smartphones. Apple's entry could bring the format to a much broader audience," said Francisco Jeronimo, vice president at market researcher IDC.

IDC expects Apple will take 44% of the foldable value in 2026 on 31% of foldable units. By 2027, it will become the market leader in the category both in value and units shipped, IDC forecast.

"Apple has made a convincing case for this form factor," Jeronimo said after spending a week with the passport-shaped Duo.

"Now comes the next test: turning excitement into availability, adoption and a lasting new chapter for the smartphone market," Jeronimo said.

What to Expect from CES 2026, the Annual Show of All Things Tech?

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New ‘Scentronic’ Technology Can Detect and Transmit Aromas Remotely

Websites Go Dark as AI Exposes Critical Security Flaws

Apple Launches into Foldable Market as iPhone Duo Sales Begin

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