CES 2011: in pictures

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer appears as a Kinect avatar on a large screen during his keynote address on the eve of CES 2011. "It's too bald", he said when he returned to the stage. Photograph: Rick Wilking/Reuters

RIM, maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, showed off prototypes of its 7-inch PlayBook tablet, which has a 1GHZ dual core processor and 1GB RAM, can easily multitask; it also supports Flash. But it declined to give a specific release date beyond the first quarter of 2011, and wouldn't be drawn on pricing - or potential battery life. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

HTC chief executive Peter Chou holds up a HTC Thunderbolt 4G Verizon smartphone on the opening day. It has an 8-megapixel camera, 8GB internal storage, 32GB SD card, and a single-core 1GHz ARM Snapdragon processor. It runs Android 2.2 with HTC's Sense overlaid on top. Photograph: Rick Wilking/Reuters

The 7-inch Motorola Xoom tablet is the first shown off at the exhibition which uses the Android 3.0 'Honeycomb' operating system, which is specifically built for tablets, unlike earlier versions of Android. Reaction has been positive. Photograph: Isaac Brekken/AP

Imperial stormtroopers from the movie Star Wars take up positions at the Panasonic booth for the Blu-ray release of the complete Star Wars movie saga. The 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment president, Mike Dunn, announced that the movies will be available on Blu-ray in September. No word yet on when the 3D version might appear... Photograph: Steve Marcus/Reuters

JVC engineer Kai Chao uses a JVC GS-TD1 3-D camcorder. 3D recording has been one of the big pushes by companies including Sony, which has also shown off its own "Bloggy" 3D recorder. Photograph: David Becker/Getty Images

LG demonstrates the first ‘glasses-free’ 3D mobile TV, which uses a lenticular design - like a postcard whose picture seems to change as you wave it back and forth - to achieve its effect. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Sharp displays its new Galapagos tablet, which comes in 5.5-inch and 10.8-inch versions. It runs on Linux, rather than Android, and uses its own proprietary file format for ebooks, rather than the increasingly popular ePub format. They also lack 3G connectivity - leading commentators to suggest that they will have to take a lesson from their name and adapt to survive. Photograph: Laura Rauch/EPA

Takatoshi Kuno demonstrates Cyberdyne's Challenge HAL hybrid assistive limb, which can help the elderly or infirm walk and can be used in physiotherapy. Health and robots are two new fields in the show this year.
Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Product demonstrator Michelle Rodriguez uses the LG Touch TV. Photograph: David Becker/Getty Images

The Samsung 7 Series Sliding PC is a 10-inch tablet design that is one of the very few on show at CES that runs Windows 7 - though with Samsung's "Touch Launcher" user interface overlaid onto top. It also features a keyboard that slides out. It weighs about 2 pounds and presently uses an Intel Atom processor, though forthcoming versions will use Intel's 1.5GHz "Oak Trail" processor. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images