4 Reasons the Consumer Electronics Show Will Be a Snoozer This Year
The Most Important Product Will Be At Another Event. Remember the iPhone? The night before Vegas CES 2007, the hottest tech announcement in recent years happened -â€" in San Francisco. Now Apple's planning a special press event for January 26th. It will be interesting to see if any companies will get more buzz than Apple at CES.- It's Too Big. According to the organizers, CES will have more than 330 new exhibitors, pushing the total to around 3,000 on site. Three and a half days to navigate the circus isn't realistic anymore, and truly innovative products from low profile companies are more likely to get lost in the shuffle than ever.
- The Increased Video Game Presence Isn't Strong Enough To Expand The Audience. CES started bringing more video games to the floor as of late, but even the most important conference, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, has had a hard time retaining its relevance. Furthermore, the summer E3 conference is perfectly timed for the big video game holiday season â€"- not a month after the big titles have already been released. This spring has a large number of big releases such as Bioshock 2 and M.A.G., but many were already shown at E3.
- The Once-Groundbreaking CES Is Now Just One Of Many Tech Events. For many of my colleagues, CES represents a two-month long grind including MacWorld, D.I.C.E. and others. Furthermore, the other conferences are much more focused -â€" a increasing trend that we've seen as technology has penetrated more and more areas. Will an Apple-focused techie go to CES instead of MacWorld? Doubtful. And while CES was once singularly important, the general tech conference now sits as a jack of all trades and a master of none.