CES 2012: The year of Windows Phone, or just a slow show?

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HTC TItan II

Nokia Lumia 900

Sony SmartWatch

Now that the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show is over, a lot of people have been talking about how the "big" news in the mobile space was all Windows Phone. I think that's an exaggerated view of reality.

As somebody who was on the floor at the show, there quite simply was no big news in mobile. It was simply more of the same - a very straightforward rehashing of what we saw throughout 2011. I think it is fair to say that the LTE-capable Nokia Lumia 900 and HTC Titan II were the biggest stories, but that doesn't make them big at all. Those announcements could have been made during any random week during the past (or next) couple of months and would have been just as "big." LTE on a non-Android device is not big news. It's catch up.

This year's Windows Phone announcements were merely an example of a big fish in a little pond, and CES 2012 was certainly a little pond. Damn near a puddle, if you ask me.

New Windows Phones that look like slightly tweaked old Windows Phones, even if one of them comes from newcomer Nokia, are not exciting. Nor were the new tablets exciting. Samsung put LTE into a somewhat different 7.7-inch form factor while ASUS showed a tweaked version of its Transformer Prime with a higher resolution display. ViewSonic showed off a cheap $170 7-inch Android tablet that it is trying to position as an Amazon Kindle Fire alternative. That price point is a bit exciting, maybe, if you can cope with the E70's single-core processor.

Motorola introduced a purple version of its DROID RAZR for Verizon. Yawn. The new DROID RAZR MAXX has a 3300mAh battery, which is cool and appreciated, but that, too, is far from exciting. DROID 4? I can't imagine anybody thought the DROID 3 would be the last of that line.

Sony (Ericsson), at least, showed off some cool new designs. I rather liked the new Xperia ion and Xperia S. Its new SmartWatch was probably the high point for me, but Sony's smartphones have yet to have a major impact on the U.S. market, so it's hard to get too riled up about them, even if they do sport nice industrial design.

LG Spectrum

Sony Xperia S

Motorola DROID 4

LG's Viper is kinda new, but rests comfortably within the normal range of specs for a higher-end smartphone. Either way, we really didn't get to see much of it. The LG Spectrum for Verizon, on the other hand, is entirely old. It's basically a CDMA version of AT&T's LTE-capable Nitro HD. The Nitro HD is a great phone (I used one extensively during CES), but there's nothing new here.

RIM was barely at the show, in my opinion. A pre-release of a long overdue PlayBook Tablet OS update on some demo units is not news, in spite of what RIM's press releases might wish us to believe.

I am by no means trying to convince you that CES is dead. There were enough people waving that banner before the show. And I think they're wrong. But let's not try to kid ourselves into thinking this show was a success for the mobile industry. It wasn't. If not for the smoky hotels, bright lights, and piles of tourists, it would have seemed like any other random week to me.

That's not what I traveled across the country to see.