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CES 2009 Shrinks With Dwindling Economy
nandemoari writes "Not long after we first heard murmurs Microsoft may be ready to lay off as much as 17 per cent of its workforce, the popular Consumer Electronics Show, held every year in Las Vegas, is rumored to be shrinking alongside the global economy. The Consumer Electronics Association, host of the CES, estimates that the numbers of both exhibitors and visitors will be down in 2009. The CEA expects about 130,000 people will attend this year, down 11,000 from last year. And about 2,700 exhibitors are expected to attend, down from 3,000 in 2008."
really consumer electronics's is hardly top of most peoples list, shelter and food are more important. expect big cuts in the future.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Dwindle the numbers of exhibitors and visitors all you want, but if you cut back on the booth babes, you've crossed the line...
because most of the exhibitors signed up long before the credit crunch started to bite. I'd expect to see a drastically reduced show next year. But at least Apple might attend for a change.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
"The CEA expects about 130,000 people will attend this year, down 11,000 from last year."
Uh.
130,000...
Down from
11,000...
That's three significant digits to two significant digits.
An increase, not a decrease.
Either this article is wrong, or (more likely, as per usual), the Slashdot editors are asleep. :/
I don't really get this particular piece of "news" or whatever it's supposed to be. It says that they're expecting less than last year, it gives some figures and ... that's it. I doubt that there are no other thing worthy of the front page at this time. This thing should have been news after the event. It would have made some sense to say "they expected this many .., which is .. less than last year and this many .. actually came." Right now I can't see how anyone would be interested in what might happen, as long as that won't influence us directly. A discussion about the expected drop of 10% of exhibitors is completely pointless. Let's wait and see what actually happens and talk about it afterward! This is modern journalism in action: "the popular Consumer Electronics Show, held every year in Las Vegas, is rumored to be shrinking alongside the global economy" Couldn't we just wait a few more days and see if the rumors were true or not and why? It's not like "unemployment will increase by 50% in the next 6 months, let's wait and see if it's true", this is more like "it's rumored tomorrow a famous pigeon will die due to sickness, please share your thoughts regarding this matter, but remember that nobody can do anything about it and we'll only find out what will happen if we wait another awful 24 hours!!1!"
Oh, did I forget to mention that it blames what might happen in a few days on the economy? There's no doubt about it, I suppose it's true, but nobody knows what impact this will have and nobody cares right now. Will I be disappointed if I get to see only 2700 exhibitors instead of 3000? How the hell should I know, I can't even visit yet and I have to wait a few more days!!! Oh, the pain, the agony, what will happen will clearly change the fate of human kind forever and there's no way we can let that happen, can we? Let's all talk about it, with no reliable sources, because everything is rumored. That will surely do something.
Simply brilliant front-page article, full of useful information which I will need when I go there.(sarcasm)
I'm feeling much better now, thank you!
~flame~
I'm a U.S. citizen who has been residing abroad for the last several years. One thing I have noticed, in speaking with friends from all over the world, is how much more difficult it is to attend family ad professional functions in the US. People have to apply for transit visas, they have to get fingerprinted, have more and more data entered into federal databases. More and more people seem to being denied entry, too. I've heard of nominees for the Latin Grammies who were denied entry because they were coming from Cuba, Europeans who were denied entry because they overstayed a visa a decade ago by two days. Other governments are getting more hostile to travellers, too; please don't get me wrong. (rant=on)However, the US goes a magnitude beyond most other Western governments. The UK seems to be the only other western country that treats business persons, shoppers, etc., whose only fault is being born on the wrong side of an arbitrary line in the sand, like criminals.
Of course because non-citizens can't vote, it's next to impossible to get this reported in media in the US, and policy will not loosen anytime soon. Of course, policymakers don't realize how much this hurts trade relations, tourism, etc.
The lack of unabated growth in everything we do is not necessarily a sign of some impending doom.
Our culture seems to have this mentality that it's a bad thing whenever something isn't consumed more, or more popular this year than the last. But at some point in the long run, if it doesn't stop, things will be far worse. It's okay if fewer people don't go to CES this year...there's still next year. Plus can't people keep up-to-date online? Isn't that what the digital age is all about?
If you need a reality check re. growth, watch this professor's summary of how continuing growth is ultimately going to hurt us (as most of us at least recognize in an arms-length, academic way): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
The video is 8 parts (sorry) and mostly focused on energy/economy, but it's pretty interesting/eye-opening. Most people already recognize these issues, but mostly at an arms-length, academic level. This video really brings reality of our future into focus.
Apple releasing a large laptop with a non-user-replaceable battery is a sign of desperation on the battery front, not success. LED backlighting is no longer an expensive technology and has found its way into netbooks, so a new technology is needed there to create significant improvement. And e-readers are just too small. Everything else really works well enough. Consumer electronics is getting to be like plumbing, or refrigerators, or cookers. You don't have Whirlpool fanboys or people who endless post on the Internet on the virtues of push fit versus compression joints. Perhaps it's a sign of maturity of the industry.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
This is the sort of thing I'd expect to see cut back during an economic slump. Much better to reduce spending on trade shows (including sending people to them to look at booth babes) than to cut salaries and staff.
Yes, it may mean that some sales that would have been made at the trade show won't happen. Sorry, but when people are worried about how their going to eat they get less excited about mp3 players. Welcome to a cyclical industry.
I am officially gone from
This has been roundly dismissed by many sources at least as credible as the initial "murmurs". (e.g. "The latest to report on the possibility of layoffs at the software giant is the blog Fudzilla, which puts the number of job cuts at 15,000, or nearly 17 percent of Microsoft's worldwide operations.") We'll find out in a week, I guess.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
It's like the flying car: it happened but it turned out to be too expensive, hard to fly and dangerous for public use (helicopter). Robots work fine in a controlled industrial environment where the overall costs jusrtify them, but not in a normal house.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Look at E3 and MacWorld as another examples. If it demonstrates anything, it's that companies are getting smarter and less willing to throw away money for something that doesn't generate equitable results. It's just another advertising venue, and paying for a few people to have a party isn't the best way to spend those promotional dollars. With bloggers, e-zines, and the web in general, you don't need to pay for the privilege of renting floor space and suites to get people to know about your product. It's more relevant if you're a new company without recognition, but if Sony puts out a press release about its new line of HDTVs, everyone who would have written about them at CES would still write about it.
Let's see. We spent the last decade or so focusing on consumer electronics and where has that gotten us? We owe China over half a trillion dollars. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt.) We owe our souls to the credit card companies. (http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=6397.) The U.S. lost a half-million jobs in November. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/economy/06jobs.html.) Maybe it's time to focus on something besides game consoles and big-screen TVs.
There's plenty of important things that we can be doing with technology. Here's one http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/american_recovery_and_reinvestment:
Why don't we spend some time and money on something more important than shiny new toys?
That it's held every year in Las Vegas?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
That it's held every year in Las Vegas?
It could well be .... I just don't want to think about that.
Sooner or later, your boss and your boss' boss are going to figure out how to use Google and Wikipedia (if nothing else, their kids will show them) and then you are going to be hurting for respect. If you take advantage of opportunities like CES to go view products and interact with manufacturers face to face, you have competitive advantage and maybe can evolve (or maintain) your "expert" opinions that the big cheeses are paying you to have. Then there is that whole, getting out of your cage once in a while thing..
Rooms and Gas are cheap. I smell a Road Trip. See you in Vegas baby.
The speed of growth matters because companies invest in various goods and they expect that for a grater investment to get greater profit ... to infinity and beyond.
It is a mind set ... where companies that don't grow - even if they bring good profit - are seen as sick. That's how the economy was set to run - to expect more in the future.
That's not a troll! That's parody, you dumb shits!
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Last I checked, CES had no space available for additional vendors. All booth spaces were booked.
So one wonders, is vendor attendance down because CES was cautious and imposed limits on itself?
as CES is basically an excuse for middle aged fat dudes to get away from home, drink, and engage in sex with prostitutes (and doesn't that just go so well with gadgeteering?) it would mean that any shrinking of the CES will result in major problems for the prostitution industry.
this mess has no bounds!
You know, that's impressive. I mean the amount of people who link to twitter's lame submissions is just out of this world.
Oh wait. Never mind.