By SAUL HANSELL

LAS VEGAS - If there was one overarching theme from the Consumer Electronics Show here from January 8-11, it was that absolutely every device in our lives is becoming a computer connected to the Internet.


The sleek little Palm Pre phone promises to make it easy to call your friends by looking up their numbers on Facebook.


New televisions from LG, Samsung and others will let viewers watch movies from Internet sites.


In two years, 90 percent of all Sony products will connect to the Internet, Howard Stringer, the chief executive of Sony, predicted.


These developments can be seen as more of the electronics industry’s constant quest for something new to tantalize gadget lovers.


But if the most exciting thing about your phone or TV is the Web sites you go to and the software applications you download, then the device itself is less important.


That is what happened to the computer industry. It is hardly an attractive business model.


“We are commoditizing new technology,’’said William Wang, the chief executive of Vizio, which has become the country’s third-largest seller of televisions after Samsung and Sony. Now that flatscreen high-definition televisions have become commonplace, he said,“the technology shifts are not that dramatic.’’


Other, more established brands beg to differ, of course. Their screens are thinner and their pictures are brighter, they advertise. So consumers will inevitably be drawn to them, they argue. And they are working on what they hope will be another technology on view at the show, one that makes mere high-definition sets seem passe: Three-dimensional televisions.


But the more established brands know the battleground is shifting. Increasingly what will differentiate one TV from another is the software it runs and the Internet services it connects to.


One approach is to try to embed computer chips with Internet connections, all of which keep getting cheaper and smaller, into ever more unusual devices. Sony introduced an Internet-connected alarm clock that will wake you up with your favorite music videos and traffic forecasts for your commute.


Asustek, the giant Taiwanese electronics company, has developed a touchscreen computer that hangs on a wall. In the future, according to Jonney Shih, the chairman of Asustek, everything in your house, even your bedroom mirror, will be a computer display.


So even as electronics makers struggle with the extremely sluggish economy and the relentless competition, they can look forward to finding ever more shapes and sizes in which to embed their gadgets.


“For a long time, our business was defined as cellphones. Hardware is not enough. We need to have a wider array of services and content. This is a major change for us,’’said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, chief executive of Nokia.