CES 2012 was notable for the shift taking place in the home automation booths and displays. In years past, there was a growing crescendo of home automation activity, as represented by the growing numbers of home automation-specific vendors and the growing size of the floor space devoted specifically to M2M. The wave seems to have crested: Control4, which had in previous years served as a key anchor-tenant, providing a huge venue for a large number of its key partners, stayed off the show floor this year. The ZigBee, Z-Wave, and HomePlug Powerline Alliance booths all seemed smaller this year, with fewer companies (and fewer varieties of applications) on display.
(Note: I was contacted by the ZigBee Alliance on 2/1/12 in response to this blog post and provided with the following clarification: "The ZigBee Alliance pavilion actually had more ZigBee Certified products on display than last year, was the same physical size/number of member pods as the past two years, and had the same applications as last year.")