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Microsoft Says Goodbye To CES
theodp writes "Microsoft has traditionally delivered the pre-show keynote and put up a mammoth booth at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas each January. No more. GeekWire reports that Microsoft will bow out of CES after this year's show (Steve Ballmer says buh-bye on Jan. 9). 'As we look at all of the new ways we tell our consumer stories,' explained Microsoft's Frank Shaw, 'it feels like the right time to make this transition.'"
What... astroturfing?
HAND.
So what, MS is not really innovating anything new so they do not really belong at CES.
It seems to me like Microsoft isn't exactly losing anything by bowing out. CES, Macworld and others are increasingly places for smaller 3rd party vendors to peddle their usually cheap (and sometimes knockoff) wares. More importantly, if you as a company attend and have a large presence, you're obligated to come up with something shiny and capable of making a splash. In a sense, it enforces a hard deadline. In the age of the internet, it seems easier to just issue a PR and rely on your pr team to generate press, or stream your own event. Apple realized this and has since moved from Macworld to hosting\streaming their own events. To me it looks like Microsoft is just making the same wise decision. They have a big enough name; they don't need the press generated by CES.
MS will probably want an all MS show. LIke a 'Microsoft-con' or something....
5 will get you 10.
Sounds like someone finally said "enough is enough!" PR events are always too much effort for too little gain.
CES is becoming increasely irrelevant. Microsoft is leaving while they are still ahead.
Have they actually had anything to show at CES worth looking at? Seems like throwing good money out to show bad products is a bad idea. It makes sense that they should make better products, but it looks like they are just going to focus on saving money.
Since I live in the Puget Sound area, I've signed uyp for and participate in MS "Usability Studies" on a regular basis (it's an excuse to shop at the Redmond Value Village, you would be amazed at the kind of stuff Microsofties donate to second hand stores).
I've seen some of the stuff they are working on in their "labs", and a lot of it is indeed quite innovative. Yet very little ever makes it to a product. Wonder why? There are some smart people working on interesting things in Redmond, but apparently at some level on the Microsoft machine, it all gets patented and forgotten (until they need to ass fuck someone with the patent?)â¦
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
But Wait! There's more?
Don't let any chairs hit you on the way out!
They continue to flood TV with their message. It makes sense - why waste money advertising on, for example, the net (after all, if you're on the net, you have almost zero attention span for ads even if you don't have them blocked, and you already have a computer, so it's not like they can really control the message in 30 or 60 seconds).
TV is still the best place to advertise something that has to be seen and heard.
Trade shows are largely a relic of the pre-Internet world. Nowadays we can get pretty much any information we need about a brand new product simply by visiting the vendor's website. We've seen technology-driven companies moving away from announcing and/or releasing products at mega-trade shows especially over the past 4-5 years, whether they're computer companies (Apple, Microsoft), camera companies (Nikon, Canon), or "we do it all and do it badly" companies (Sony).
#DeleteChrome
Microsoft (Dec. 21, 2011): As we look at all of the new ways we tell our consumer stories â" from product momentum disclosures, to exciting events like our Big Windows Phone, to a range of consumer connection points like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft.com and our retail stores â" it feels like the right time to make this transition.
Apple (Dec. 16, 2008): Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple's Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.
And still five years behind.
'As we look at all of the new ways we tell our consumer stories,' explained Microsoft's Frank Shaw, 'it feels like the right time to make this transition.'"
New ways they tell consumer stories?! Golly that is some grade-A PR bullshit right there.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
...my all expenses paid trips to pr0n-con^H^H^H^H^H^H^H, CES.
On topic, I'm surprised that it took Microsoft this long to drop out of CES. It has been shrinking and becoming more and more irrelevant with each passing year. I always figured it was just an excuse to be in town at the same time as the AVN awards.
Now you can get 2 AC's for the low price of only 3 payments of $49.99! And you also get the Ginsu knife as well!
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
You're definitely getting an internet for Christmas.
HAND.
aptly named.
The sad part is until they fire Ballmer who is determined to kill the golden gooses MSFT is in REAL trouble, hell look at the GUI for Windows 8, which is really NOTHING but WinTab being shoved down all their home and business users just so Ballmer can dream of having his very own iPad. I bet you hand that man an iShiny he lovingly caresses it before it sinks in that he don't make it and throws it against the wall!
MSFT needs to accept the fact that they are the new IBM. IBM makes shitloads of money but they will NEVER be "the company" that everyone looks to, old "big blue" as the late Jobs put it, ever again. MSFT has three golden gooses that despite the zealot FOSSIes and iUsers dreams will NEVER go away and will be billion dollar businesses for probably ever as long as they keep updating to support the latest hardware. I'm of course talking and Windows and Office and WinServer which together makes a pretty damned nice solution to most business problems. And of course Windows in the home won't be going anywhere, I'm guessing when Win8 aka "Holy shit you thought Vista was bad look at this!" hits folks will simply stay with Win 7 and call it a day.
They just have to accept they will NEVER be "the company" again like they were in the 90s, where people that didn't even have computers lined up to buy Win95 because they were sure they'd need it. Those days are gone, they missed the mobile boat which has done sailed under twin flags on iShiny and Googledroid. You see I'm willing to bet my last dollar if you could get him to talk off the record he honestly believes that by trying to shoehorn the Windows name onto a cell phone GUI'd OS he can trick developers into writing for WinPhone and WinTab, hence why he is cutting his nose off to spite his face on .NET and Silverlight simply because he can't figure out how to get them to run fast on ARM.
But YOU know it won't work, I know it won't work, and any developer stupid enough to fall for such an obvious ploy is too dumb to write any code worth having anyway. They've thrown billions at the consumer market trying to be the iShiny and its been a MASSIVE fail, just as even after buying all of Yahoo's search they'll never get better than a distance second against Google.
TLDR? The ship has sailed, you've missed the boat, accept this and enjoy your billions in steady profits on X86 for all eternity, because otherwise you are just shitting money down the toilet like all those MMOs that fold after they find out they will NEVER be WoW.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Considering the only thing they have is the XBox and the world + dog has been coo coo for iPods, iPhones, and iPads plus the Android devcies, it just doesn't make sense for them to be there with no hope of winning consumer hearts and minds.
It makes perfect sense because it isn't called the <bold>Consumer</bold> Electronics Show for nothing.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I attended CES last year. Nobody there was interested in the stuff that wasn't the 'end product.' As such, people were in the MSFT booth, but they were much more interested in the hardware from other vendors than they were with the MSFT software running on it. People could have seen that stuff in the booths of the appropriate hardware vendor. The one place this didn't hold true was in the XBox/Kinect area. There were a ton of people interested in spending time in that space - but that's an 'end product'. Interestingly, it's an end product that is probably best showcased at E3.
The same can be said about Intel's booth. The biggest draw there was the chance to play Portal 2 before release.
Chances are that, unless I can hold the product you're selling in my hand and get an immediate benefit from it on its own, it probably isn't best showcased with a mega-dollar booth at CES (a small booth in the component exhibitors area maybe).
I guess I'm just saying that conventions like CES probably aren't the best bang for the buck for MSFT.
...the porn vendors left and set up their own show. Who wants to go to CES and endure all that crap when your show badge doesn't even buy you any decent eye candy?
We don't have anything to show that people couldn't easily pick apart, and we don't want customers to get close to Windows 8 until we can keep it from randomly exploding, and Balmer's stage presence... let's face it, he's become a laughingstock. So we're choosing to present our products in much more controlled circumstances like TV ads. And in those ads we'll mostly be ragging on how complicated our competitor's products are, because we can't compete on functionality, as every one of them will do more than ours.
There, fixed it for you.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
But YOU know it won't work, I know it won't work, and any developer stupid enough to fall for such an obvious ploy is too dumb to write any code worth having anyway. They've thrown billions at the consumer market trying to be the iShiny and its been a MASSIVE fail, just as even after buying all of Yahoo's search they'll never get better than a distance second against Google.
Unfortunately, just because code isn't worth having does not prevent it from being successful, even wildly successful. And good code, even great code is no guarantee of success.
As to MS's efforts at iShiny, brown is not the color to choose and I am deeply troubled that my Macbook has not flagged "iShiny" as a misspelling.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Where are you getting that .Net and Silverlight can't run fast on ARM? .Net is a virtual runtime environment similar to Java and Dalvik, both of which run fine on newer ARM processors. Windows Mobile development (ARM) is currently .Net and Silverlight and runs fairly well. I'm an android user myself, but know enough to say what your spewing isn't accurate.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
being all bent over and a ball gag shoved in my mouth.
You're doing it wrong.
Well of course it didn't because it KNOWS its iShiny! Its all glossy and sleek and iShiny as hell!
But lets be honest friend, let the fangirls mode me down like they did the parent posting as i just don't care, but you can just SMELL the fail with Win 8 can't you? its so damned obvious that the poor little sweaty monkey is practically wearing an "I heart Apple!" T-shirt and hugging an iShiny with a Winsticker on the back every night so desperate is he to have a WinShiny mobile that kicks ass. I don't even want to know how many billions he has shat down the toilet trying to get into mobile while the dumbass ignore the most obvious which is the reason people run Windows is not because they give a flying crap about MSFT but they want and need to run WINDOWS PROGRAMS which just won't work on the ARM chip.
As for the other poster, obviously a .NET or Silverlight dev, who got his panties in a twist that are being kicked to the curb because Ballmer and a winTab iShiny? look friend don't blame me, I think .NET is just fine and Silverlight is pretty damned powerful but the people that actually know how to write in those languages are X86 PROGRAMMERS and all Ballmer give a flying fuck about right now is obviously ARM based touchscreens. i mean have you SEEN Win 8? that thing is practically fucking useless on ANYTHING but a touchscreen! Now how many touchscreens you got hooked to your X86 computers? thought so.
Its just sad to see a large corp like that hit the skids and go to shit thanks to one man's obsession. it reminds me of the Pepsi guy years at Apple where he basically bet the whole damned farm on the look and feel lawsuit and didn't have a backup plan and the whole company hit the skids when they lost. here you have Ballmer willing to take a giant shit on one of the biggest consistent cash cows in history simply because he wants folks to toss a WinShiny every time a new one comes out like they do with iShiny but lets face it, MSFT has NEVER had that kind of slavish loyalty, not when Gates run it and sure as fuck not now.
final prediction: Win 8 becomes Ballmer's folly, possibly getting him pink slipped (Please God please!) and the WinShiny dreams goes down as the worst failure since MSFT Bob and like Bob will be talked about in laughter for decades. Mobile will be split between Apple and Google, with MSFT buying RIM and becoming the business man's cell phone while their consumer phones destroy what's left of Nokia. Meanwhile Macbook owners will still be startled to find macs see no problem with the word iShiny because...well they are! So wave your iShiny silver flag with pride, this is one battle that MSFT isn't gonna be able to buy a win and this is coming from someone without a single iShiny or droid in sight. I can just smell the fail leaking out of Win 8 like the wafting of a porta potty in July.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Now if only we can begin the mourning phase for phone books and most of the math you learned you in school.
The plural of goose is geese not gooses