Dougherty & Company Discusses 6 Things to Watch for at CES (FIT) (GPRO) (GRMN)

Dougherty & Company analyst Charles Anderson offered six things that won't surprise them if announced at this year's Annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) which starts next week in Las Vegas (1/6-1/9).

1. Fitbit (NYSE: FIT) announces several new products with a general push up-market.

"We fully expect to see new products from Fitbit announced next Tuesday, Jan. 5, when the company holds a press conference at 10:30am ET. In terms of what those products may be, our sense is that we will see a mixture of new form factors and updates to existing models. We also expect to see Fitbit in more pacts with fashion brands (similar to the Tory Burch partnership). In terms of updating existing models, we believe it is likely we will see new sensors deployed that measure data points such as skin temperature and heart rate variability. When we met with Fitbit management this quarter, they noted their areas of focus were: activity/exercise, nutrition, sleep and stress/well-being. We believe we could see a revision of Fitbit devices and software to better track stress via heart rate variability and skin temperature, along with software that offers coaching for better sleep and stress management. In terms of new form factors, we believe we could see Fitbit going up-market closer to Garmin GPS running watches (sleeker and more feature-rich than the Surge) and potentially even a smartwatch. As seen below, the invite sent out by Fitbit for their Tuesday CES press conference included a background image that looked very much like a leather band attached to a metal watch."

2. Synaptics (NASDAQ: SYNA) (Neutral) provides more color around Force Touch trajectory (Galaxy S7 win?).

"When Synaptics held its analyst day in November, we were struck by positive management tone around the inclusion of Force Touch (what they are calling ClearForce) in upcoming smartphones. They noted that Force Touch could be in "tens of millions" of non-Apple smartphones in 2016. That said, we left not knowing whether this meant Samsung (who we believe is making their own touchscreen chip for the Galaxy S7 smartphone) would use a ClearForce chip from Synaptics to enable Force Touch on the S7. Since then, a handful of tech blogs have suggested this may be the case. We believe this question may ultimately be resolved at CES to the extent management offers more color generally on their Force Touch progress."

3. GoPro (NASDAQ: GPRO) (Buy, PT$30) does not show off the Karma drone just yet, but shows more demonstration footage.

"Leading up to CES, GoPro has been offering more clues about its quadcopter drone, named Karma -- which is ticketed for a 1H16 release. A recent video taken by a Karma drone offered this voice-over from CEO Nick Woodman: "Life is a dream. Now what if you could move freely through this dream? ... Experience it from any perspective." That has led some observers to speculate that we may see a GoPro drone with 360-degree video capture. But as we sit here today, we believe the most likely scenario is that the first generation Karma will be a free-standing drone that a GoPro camera (perhaps the Session) attaches to via a gimbal. And at the moment, we are not expecting to see any hardware at CES, but perhaps more demo video footage. Unlike Fitbit, GoPro is not holding any press conferences. Our sense is that if there was something to show off on Karma, we'd see a scheduled press conference from GoPro."

4. Ambarella (NASDAQ: AMBA) (Neutral) shows off new analytics capabilities for quadcopters, cars and security.

"The beauty of Ambarella at CES is that the company is often willing to show prototype products and reference designs that indicate future areas of interest. So this year we expect to see demos of what chipsets with computer vision/analytics could do for drones (object avoidance/autonomy), cars (autonomy) and security (suspect detection, change detection)."

5. Garmin (NASDAQ: GRMN) (Neutral) refreshes Fitness products to add on-wrist heart rate monitors.

"Garmin tends to announce new products every year at CES, and this year we expect to see updates to Fitness products that include on-wrist optical heart rate monitors. The obvious candidates are the Vivofit, Vivoactive, Forerunner 9XX series, Forerunner 1X series and Fenix watch. We also note Garmin has held the trademark on several unannounced product names for some time now: Vivosport, Vivowell and Venu. In the trademark description, all appear to be Fitness products."

6. Less noise around wireless charging competition for IDTI (NASDAQ: IDTI) (Buy, PT$33), but possibly announced entry into the category by Maxim (NASDAQ: MXIM) and/or NXP (NASDAQ: NXPI).

"We note that IDTI management is not holding investment community meetings at CES this year (same as last year), and thus we do not expect to hear much from the company at CES. However, last year we witnessed a spate of new entrants to the wireless charging IC space, notably ON Semiconductor (ON, NR). Our sense going into this year's CES is that more chipmakers are exiting wireless power than entering, especially for consumer devices due to a general shift toward higher-margin/stickier opportunities in automotive and industrial. Thus, we are not anticipating much in the way of "noise" from possible IDTI competition. If we are wrong, our guess would be that we would see the likes of Maxim or NXP announce entry into the category. Based on our checks, we believe both have explored the technology (NXP has had reference designs certified by the WPC)."

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