It’s a great year for mobile technology. At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show held this week we will be able to see plenty of tablets and applications and surprisingly technologies we thought were on the verge of being forgotten such as PCs trying to capture the freshness of mobile devices. And that goes for the whole year. It seems that Santa’s bag is a lot lighter this year as laptops are getting thinner and thinner.

Mobile Technology will Dominate CES and the Future

Cameras are turning more or less into phones, tablet manufacturers are much more generous (at least financial wise) and you won’t be able to go anywhere in 2012 without seeing an app. Not even in your vehicle! Let’s take every surprise to be shown at CES one by one:

1. Tablets

As far as tablets are concerned, tablet manufacturers rely mainly on two ground breaking operating systems this year: Android 4.0 and Windows 8. This can only mean one thing: competition. But that’s not the only thing that’s attractive at this year’s show. Tablets are also expected to cost a lot less and we might see some interesting new features as well such as stand-alone GPS, waterproof or 3D. We don’t know about you, but of all the devices that will be shown this week we are mostly looking forward to seeing Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Related Read: Lenovo K91, the First TV in the World to Feature Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich

2. HD TV

If tablets are ready to take over the world, HD TVs are not looking so good this year, unfortunately. It appears as if this field is not yet ready for the avalanche of innovations and we might have to wait for 2013 as regards HD TV. There’s no need to get our expectations too high this year, at least not as far as TV improvements go. We can, however, expect manufacturers to present us some ways of taking the experience of watching television to another level, focusing on making it more user friendly rather than actually upgrading the devices. Where’s the mobile in this? Well, as you can see from the latest news, tech players are endowing TV with mobile OS, such as  Ice Cream Sandwich and even more are looking to incorporate mobile apps.

3. Laptops

Laptops, on the other hand, could possibly improve significantly. As far as we’ve seen so far, laptop manufacturers are aiming for better systems, materials and it seems like they are trying to stand out by making them lighter and thinner than they’ve ever been before. The main focus of the event, at least regarding laptops, will definitely be Ultrabooks. These devices have gradually progressed since the end of 2011 and the results are obvious. The two main goals for laptops will be lower power use and better graphics. We are really looking forward to more ultrabooks like the HP Gorilla Glass Envy 14 Spectre, for example.

4. Smartphones

In 2011, Verizon presented us the very first LTE 4G phones, AT&T came up with the Motorola Atrix 4G, LG introduced their Optimus phones and Nvidia showed us the first Tegra 2 dual-core phones. Nothing’s certain, but what we’re expecting to see is this: HTC Edge, the first quad-core phone, HTC Elite, the first LTE Windows Phone by AT&T and the Sony Ericsson Xperia that has a 13 megapixel camera. Not bad, but will companies be able to top the last year?

Suggested Read: Smartphones: Changing Digital Photography and Camera Use

5. Cameras

It seems that cameras are starting to feel threatened by smartphones hence the tendency to include phone features in cameras. Aside from this, manufacturers are working on enhancing the zoom range but at the same time making cameras smaller and smaller. What might be interesting to see is Samsung’s new release, the first DualView camera with WiFi connectivity. Some suggest that cameras might eventually disappear or lose more ground because of smartphone spread.

6. PC

Right off the bat, we need to tell you that what you need to keep a close eye on this year is the highly anticipated processors such as Ivy Bridge by Intel. Trying to keep up with the evolving technology racing at the speed of light before computer manufacturers’ eyes, these processors are set out not only to be thinner and faster but to enhance performance and consume less power as well. Some say desktop PCs are making a comeback but until we’ve seen some actual results it’s too soon to tell. PC have a chance to turn mobile if they’ll become smaller and more powerful, maybe All-In-One is what we need.

7. Networking

What companies are mainly concerned about improving routers this year by making wireless Internet coverage in areas you could not have this before possible. That’s not the only change expected to happen concerning routers; manufacturers are supposedly working on increasing the speed at up to 7 GB per second. But this also means that the wireless signal will start disintegrating much faster. Recently, engineers made possible a new record in data transfer: 186 gigabytes/second.

8. Applications

Last but not least, apps are likely to be extremely loud this year. And they have a reason for that, too! We’re expecting to see some improvements regarding graphics and let’s not forget those promising to include gesture recognition. For further reading, on the same line of thought, you might want to check out the collaboration between Facebook and Mercedes Benz which will most certainly take social networking to a different level.

So, basically, if we were to sum up the following year, it seems that mobile technology is for the win and the keywords for the next 12 months would be thin and light.