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.'"

Comments

Consumer Expos on the way out?

[milbournosphere]

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.

Re:Consumer Expos on the way out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Counterpoint: the Big Show is a useful tool for focusing attention of the engineering staff, including the gatekeepers (like the build team) who otherwise enjoy telling people why their special request can't be done. It gives engineers and small teams developing new stuff something concrete to shoot for. And once projects and products are committed for the show, serious issues MUST be resolved by that date, so slipping the schedule by one week every week is no longer an option.

I agree with the MS guy that January is an awkward time for the development staff though - I'm sure that working 60 hour weeks through the holidays gets old fast.

Re:Consumer Expos on the way out?

[X0563511]

including the gatekeepers (like the build team) who otherwise enjoy telling people why their special request can't be done.

You mean it lets management force poor ideas down the development team's collective throat?

Re:Yawn!

[Toe, The]

You sure the Zune 2 won't be coming out any day now...?

Inovate to ass fuck?

[Frosty Piss]

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¦

Re:Inovate to ass fuck?

[Dishevel]

Meanwhile, the brain-dead leadership lets it happen.

What leadership?
Very few companies have leaders anymore. With few exceptions.

Re:Inovate to ass fuck?

[Dogtanian]

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?)

Thing is, this observation isn't new- it's been commented on for *years* that Microsoft have labs stuffed full of very clever and innovative people, yet still seem to end up churning out mediocre, uninspiring crap. One explanation is that internal politics are responsible- this article comment from someone who claims to have worked at Microsoft (click link for full version) is informative:-

There have been many instances at Microsoft where genuine innovations have sat on the shelf or been half-heartedly brought to market [.. In 2002 MS had..] a prototype smartphone that had (essentially) all the useability features of an iPhone, including a trick interface, accelerometer and multi-touch. It was cobbled together and not very pretty, but as a proof of concept, it worked. Yet it never saw the light of day. Why?

Brass’s tablet project was well advanced in the labs too, but somehow never got the traction it deserved internally. [..]

Microsoft has a Darwinian internal structure. Each business unit has to fight for scarce resources, - they compete with each other and only the strong survive. Succeeding in that environment involves more than just having a good (or even great) product or project. Unless you’re Office or Windows, you have to build symbiotic relationships with other business units (preferably the big guys) just to ensure your survival. You have to make their success (at least partially) dependent on yours

[..Secondly..] in its youth, Microsoft could afford to hire only the best and the brightest. Smart people are flexible and innovative in their approach and this reflects in the company’s culture. As the enormous growth of the late 90s took hold, we couldn’t keep up with the demand for more employees and as a consequence, the quality bar dropped. We started employing people who were merely good, not outstanding. These new people were less flexible, less able to handle organisational ambiguity and less passionate about what they were doing. They started to build bureaucracy as a safety-net and as a structure in which they were comfortable operating. Goodbye to dynamic decision-making and rapid market responses.

Anyway, bottom line; the "smart" people starting work there know (or must be really, *really* blinkered not to know) of this reputation, so why are they working there? Silly money?

I'll grant that they came up with Kinect recently, which was pretty innovative (albeit as a response to the Wii controller) and smacked of research turned into a workable product. But that was pretty recent (so couldn't have inspired any but the newest recruits) and probably benefitted from being an XBox product that was out of the way of the entrenched interests and politics of the main Windows-focussed divisions, and in an area where MS had more to gain than lose from innovation.

Re:Inovate to ass fuck?

[antifoidulus]

Which is why Microsoft needs a shakeup starting at the top, the senior execs at Microsoft still seem to be under the impression that it is still 1997 and the only real competition for them are the other execs at Microsoft, not other companies/entities. You can see this reflected not only in their product lines which often feature competing products in the same industry, but also within individual products. The interfaces for different parts of the Windows GUI are different, and of course the GUI for office is different than anything in Windows. Funny thing is that this kind of splintering seems almost inevitable in these behemoth corporations. Microsoft just seems to be following the path blazed by Sony where the company gets too big to manage effectively and constant infighting makes the company incredibly sluggish. Look at the personal music player market, Sony used to be synonymous with portable music, but thanks to their music wing they refused to adapt and not only did they lose the market abroad, they barely have any inroads in the Japanese portable music player market. Microsoft would be wise to read Steve Jobs comments on Sony in his biography, they apply to Microsoft as well.

Re:Heh

[clampolo]

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.

Not just Microsoft

[93 Escort Wagon]

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).

Re:Not just Microsoft

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

I'll give you the Paris Air Show, but those are airplanes for goodness sake!

For many, the primary value of the Paris Air Show is to see if the Soviets/Russians will crash their latest Tupolev/Sukhoi/MiG. Can't be good for sales. To be fair, they haven't done it for a while at Paris.

Microsoft CES Exit Echoes Apple MacWorld Exit

[theodp]

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.

Well there go...

[dave562]

...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.

Nobody cares about software at CES

[ravenscar]

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.

Re:Nah. It is all those stores they are opening

[aztracker1]

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.