Jeff Gelles: Consumer Electronics group's 'Best of Innovations' award focuses on 'viable products'

LAS VEGAS - Browse for consumer electronics on the Web or stroll through a large retailer like Best Buy or Microcenter, and you can see how tough it is to grab attention in today's crowded marketplace.

That's one of the key challenges facing thousands of innovators and entrepreneurs flooding the casino capital this week at the gigantic Consumer Electronics Show. It's not enough to develop the most amazing new tablet, laptop, smartphone, camera, or whatever device you've dreamt up. You also have to vie to be noticed, or trust that cream will eventually rise.

Even some of the biggest players have fallen on their faces - as Microsoft, the giant of Redmond, Wash., has repeatedly demonstrated. The newest Windows phones and the promised Windows 8 operating system - whose "Metro" user interface will superimpose the Windows 7 Phone "Live Tile" innovation onto an entire range of digital platforms - may mark a turn in those fortunes.

Microsoft has connected in the past, as it did just a year ago with Kinect for Xbox 360, the body-as-game-controller interface that enjoyed a record-breaking product launch. (It's probably no surprise that Microsoft plans to introduce Kinect for Windows on Feb. 1, or that it touts a future where shows such as Sesame Street will be available in interactive form. Your kid, too, can throw a coconut to Elmo without a mouse or joystick.)

One early clue to Kinect's success came at last year's show, where it won a "Best of Innovations" award from the event's sponsor, the Consumer Electronics Association.

The group tries to screen out products that really aren't ready for prime time, says research director Shawn Dubravac. Among its rules: A product should have been released since last April 1 or due to hit the market before this coming April 1.

Dubravac says it also weighs practical considerations: "We try to focus on viable products rather than products that are hopes and dreams five years away."

That hurt some of the year's most awe-inspiring products, such as the Samsung 55-inch OLED television - the acronym stands for "organic light-emitting diode" - one of the best-of-CES finalists for the tech-obsessed website CNET.com.

"It's very thin, it has fabulous colors, great viewing angles," Dubravac says. "But it's cost-prohibitive. Even if that product hits the market this year, it'll be $8,000 or $10,000." He expects OLED's time will come, but projects that even by 2015 the screens will still represent just 3 percent of the market.