CEA estimates that about 140,000 people attended CES, and the state of the industry is showing strength. Gary Shapiro predicts that consumer electronics spending will show a 6% increase for 2010, to $180 billion, and will rise an additional 3% this year, to more than $186 billion. The predominant themes this year were tablets, apps, 3D, 4G, gestural interfaces, and ‘smart’ connected devices. We saw a great deal in terms of sharing content across multiple CE platforms – and the high-speed networks required to do so. ETC will have a post show analysis with details of the major themes and trends available by next week.

While media convergence and related CE devices/services take center stage at CES, Hollywood is taking important steps toward addressing the digital production and distribution of media content. The Hollywood tech community – under leadership of the major studios and the ETC@USC – published its Interoperable Master Format (IMF) in 2010, a proposed voluntary specification designed to serve as a standard digital distribution master. Recently, SMPTE announced the creation of an IMF working group to move forward with standardizing the format. While we were covering the increasingly expanded array of connected, over-the-top, CE devices and platforms featured at CES, The Hollywood Reporter was addressing the relevance of IMF.

Winners of this year’s CNET Best of CES Awards were announced Saturday morning in the lobby of South Hall. ‘Best of Show’ went to Motorola’s Android-based XOOM tablet, one in a growing number of tablets targeting the burgeoning iPad market. This year’s ‘People’s Voice Award’ went to the Razer Switchblade – an Intel Atom-based concept design to bring PC gaming to a portable form factor. Razer has taken the familiar keyboard and redesigned it as a tool for mobile gaming controls.

Cisco’s Videoscape is an end-to-end content management solution that ties social networks, advertisers, content providers, unmanaged network/Internet and managed access networks into one cohesive system that allows service providers to seamlessly manage the consumer experience across multiple screens.

The CE industry made great progress on the green front in 2010. Green technology is more sophisticated and practical, and green initiatives have transformed from gimmicky fringe products to important corporate strategies for the biggest global manufacturers.

Adobe announces partnership with Samsung to support the AIR development platform on Smart TVs. This will allow developers to reuse existing assets to quickly develop apps for connected televisions. AIR’s cross-platform technology is especially good news for content companies who can re-purpose existing assets to quickly create an app for a movie property that can then be delivered across an array of CE devices.

Qualcomm promoted its partnership with Mattel on a new line of game products that utilize a vision-based Augmented Reality technology. The partnership was announced last year, beta appeared in the fall, and cross-platform, peer-to-peer demos have recently taken place. The first product out of this partnership is the Android smartphone-based version of the iconic 1960s game, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. In addition to gaming, Qualcomm sees Augmented Reality as a potential for travel, entertainment, education, and other applications.

Home Server Technologies Inc. (HSTi) showcased an innovative new technology called Wireless Media Stick, a simple and affordable ($119) product that allows media connectivity between mobile devices, TVs, DVD players and other devices. What’s especially interesting about the technology is that you can also stream on-the-go; the Wireless Media Stick app is downloadable for smartphones and by taking the Stick to any location you can directly stream data from a mobile device to any TV, computer or stereo that is USB playback compatible.

Samsung announced a tablet that runs on Windows instead of Android. The Sliding PC 7 is a touch-screen device with its own slide-out keyboard, giving users the option of a multi-touch display or full keyboard and mouse. Larger than an iPad but smaller than many Netbooks, the 10.1-inch Sliding PC 7 features a multitouch screen so it can operate in both tablet- and Netbook-like formats.

RIM hasn’t kept the BlackBerry PlayBook much of a secret, but there was one specification it saved to announce at CES — the PlayBook will be a 4G device. Sprint Nextel will offer a version of the PlayBook that runs on Sprint’s next-generation network. The 4G PlayBook is expected to be available this summer. Unlike most of the iPad competitors, PlayBook does not use Android, but will run on the BlackBerry Tablet OS that uses QNX technology.