CES 2012: interview roundup (video)

By Amar Toor

The Engadget stage was home to many an interview at this year's CES. Many, many interviews. Given the deluge of guests we hosted in Las Vegas this year, you could be forgiven for not keeping up — for throwing up your hands in exasperation and making a sandwich to heal the hurt. You could, but you won't. That's because this year, we thought it'd be a good idea to corral all of our CES 2012 interviews into one big metallic box, and hand-pick only the plumpest, juiciest and most eyebrow-arching ones for your enjoyment. We then took those select few and put them in a smaller, spotlit box, which was affixed atop the aforementioned metallic box with a butterfly shaped bow and maybe some duck fat. Add some mood lighting, a splash of bourbon, and voilà. It's the CES 2012 interview roundup, and it's after the break.

Arguably the biggest name to grace our coffee tables this week was none other than Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. Nokia, of course, unveiled the AT&T-exclusive Lumia 900 at CES this year, which is one of just a few things Elop discussed during his sitdown with our very own Myriam Joire. Other topics included the Lumia 710, fragmentation and Windows Phone. Could Nokia bring a new slate of operating systems to the US this year? Watch above to hear Elop's take on it.
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On Tuesday, Sprint VP of product Dan Owens stopped by our stage to look back on the year that was, and forward to his company's plans for 2012. Sprint made a splash in Vegas when it added the Samsung Galaxy Nexus to its lineup. That's one of the things Owens talked about (and displayed) during his time with us, as was Sprint's ongoing 4G rollout.

When Nintendo's Cindy Gordon strolled up to the stage, she had only one thing on her mind: the forthcoming Wii U, and its accompanying touchscreen controller. Originally announced back in June, this console, according to Gordon, will "reinvent the way games are played." Gordon, who serves as Nintendo America's VP VP of corporate affairs, took some time to walk us through the device, emphasizing its HD graphics, dual-screen ingenuity, and its "more personal" user experience. She also mentioned that grown men were crying during this week's demonstration of Zelda.

You know who else had a busy CES? Texas Instruments. TI's OMAP family of chips were seemingly everywhere this year, popping up in various smartphones, tablets and even the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0. A new member also made its way to our stage — the OMAP 5 platform. The new design made its debut, in fact, on our own stage, courtesy of Remi El-Ouazzane, TI's VP of OMAP. Is there an OMAP 5-based laptop in our near future? Brian Heater is now accepting wagers.

This interview involved a full three guests and no less than three demo gadgets, but the real star of the segment was Toshiba's TransferJet wireless LSI — an open standard technology that allows users to cordlessly transfer files at a maximum data rate of 560Mbps. Toshiba's Deepak Mithani demonstrated the technology with a variety of devices before our very eyes. Watch it. It's wild.

What better way to wrap up the week than with a little fireside chat with Gary Shapiro? As president of the Consumer Electronics Association, Shapiro certainly has a unique perspective on the madness that is CES, and was probably the perfect guest to wrap up our week. Wanna know how crazy this year's event was? According to Shapiro, more than 153,000 people attended. That's a record not only for CES, but for all of mankind, apparently. Click above to hear more statistics and broadly-brushstroked musings.

And that's only a small slice of our CES 2012 interview archive. Browse through our full collection below.

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