“Microsoft said Wednesday that Steve Ballmer’s keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show next month will be the company’s last center stage event at the show, and that it will focus more on company-owned venues going forward,” Barb Darrow reports for GigaOM.

“This keynote change of plan was initially covered as a Microsoft-initiated decision. Statements from the Consumer Electronics Association subsequently recast the move as a mutual decision made amicably, as covered by The New York Times,” Darrow reports. “But there’s more to it than that. Folks inside Microsoft said that it was the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the organization in charge of CES, that put the kibosh on future Microsoft keynotes and that Microsoft then pulled plans for its huge CES booth in response.”

Darrow reports, “Said one company insider: ‘Microsoft didn’t pull out of the keynote — they were kicked out. Big difference.’”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Hmm, so maybe this time Microsoft didn’t copy Apple at all.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers "Sarah" and "Dan K." for the heads up.]

Related article:
Microsoft copies Apple yet again: Pulls out of CES in favor of its own events – December 21, 2011