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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.'"
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.
You sure the Zune 2 won't be coming out any day now...?
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.
They don't need to astroturf. Not with astounding and game changing technology like the Windows 8 and Windows Phone. They are perfect for all your personal and professional needs. They also make great stocking stuffers as well.
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.
'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-
Ssshhh! The fake astroturfer was being snarky!
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
...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.
What... astroturfing?
Wasn't really telling consumers at CES anyway, but CE industry press. I attended one of these keynotes about in a nutshell Bill Gates was threatening to invade the markets of about half the companies present. He seemt to carry on like it was all a wonderful, bright and shiny future, not realizing he was talking about taking the bread out of attendees mouths with his Microsoft products. Lotsa hogwash anyway, most of his prophecies were never to be realized.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
Now if only we can begin the mourning phase for phone books and most of the math you learned you in school.