“Maybe I’m nuts, but could Apple’s decision to pull out of Macworld presage a move to throw its lot in with CES, and as such take a great deal of Microsoft’s thunder away from that event?” Arik Hesseldahl blogs for BusinessWeek.
“Consider my reasoning. What company’s product has over the last seven years so up-ended the consumer electronics industry? The iPod, and now the iPhone,” Hesseldahl writes.
MacDailyNews Take: That would be “products,” Arik. Plural. And, since everybody’s either using the real thing or an inferior upside-down and backwards knockoff, you should include the Macintosh in your list of game-changing products, too.
Hesseldahl continues, “What company has been notably absent from CES for the better part of a decade? Apple. I don’t think Apple has ever exhibited at CES, and if it has, it hasn’t done so in the years that I have attended going back to 1998 or so. For the last few years, Apple’s announcements in San Francisco have utterly overshadowed anything announced at CES in Las Vegas, to the point that it was starting to get a little embarrassing.”
“Could a new re-imagined Stevenote at CES in Las Vegas starting in 2010, become the de-facto headline event at CES and thus push Microsoft’s presence out of the limelight? It certainly could,” Hesseldahl writes. “I’m just thinking out loud here….but it certainly could. It probably won’t happen, but it certainly could.”
Hesseldahl writes, “And if Apple did do CES, I’d grit my teeth and start going again.”
Full article here.
Yikes! I had this exact same thought. Take a year off from stealing CES’s thunder from afar and then walk through the front door next year, take the stage, and knock ’em all dead. It makes sense to me!
Wouldn’t they have announced it by now? Wouldn’t they need to be registered and begin preparing by now?
This would be interesting but I think Apple is going it alone. They know that the believers will follow them without CES or Macworld. Can the Antichrist be a machine?
Apple didn’t replace the Boston Expo, nor the Tokyo, NAB or Apple Expo in Paris, why would their acts differ this time ?
Oh, 2010.
No coffee yet for R2.
Not a Chance.
The publicity Apple gets from the announcements comes from the people who were there writing about it and from people watching online. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter if it’s at Macworld, CES, or if they do their own thing because the people who are there are not their end customers. Since they’ve already been eclipsing CES whilst not even being there I don’t see what the attraction of going to CES would be. Macworld and CES have the disadvantages of forcing them to fit into a fixed timescale, whereas anything they do themselves can be whenever they want with whatever people/agencies they want to invite.
1 infinite loop is the place to make announcements. let them come.
Guess again.
Why compete with CES when you can simply overrun it! I bet Apple and Vegas launch a new casino game based on Apple Stock. Apple Roulette anyone?
@ HMCIV & dijonaise
Exactly, if Apple has products to announce in the CES timeframe, just hold an event at 1 Infinite Loop.
If they don’t, why bother and why waste the time and money.
CES has already gone from a twice a year show to a once a year show.
Swing and a miss. Apple’s not going to pull out of one poorly-timed annual tradeshow that’s focused on them just to go to another poorly-timed tradeshow that’s not focused on them.
Tradeshows aren’t cost effective, and that’s why Apple’s giving them up.
-jcr
I said this after the initial announcement, and someone replied: “Why would Apple dump one dying trade show for another one”. After brief consideration I had to agree they were right. Apple will do their own thing. Time for big trade shows to go the way of the dinosaur.
I guess Apple are fed up of either waiting for Macworld so they can show new stuff or rushing certain products to market when they are not ready just so they can announce them at Macworld.
It’s sad yes that so many new MacHeads will never get to see a live Stevenote but it’s better this way so they can announce new products when they are good and ready. Probably less chance of leaks this way too.
Apple doesn’t want to be locked in to making announcements and delaying or advancing product announcement just due to the scheduling of a trade show. So what’s different about CES than Macworld? Oh, CES features thousands of non-Apple related products to compete with and still has the same scheduling problems for Apple.
As he mentioned in his article, Apple is already overshadowing CES with its local announcements, so why worm into CES?
Seems to be a story about a dream he had after drinking too much eggnog.
What value is a fixed date Trade Show these days when the bulk of your customers live thousands of miles away.
There are better ways to think different.
But big Trade Show exhibit halls are so much fun!! **sniff**
Microsoft has thunder?
Nah, they’re just gassy.
Trade shows are played. Let the competition deal with the big $ spent, the travel logistics, the housing logistics, etc., plus the sucky ROI.
Apple says, “Thanks but no thanks. We’ll build it and you will come (to 1 Infinite Loop).”
Peace.
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Olmecmystic
If Jobs gave the Keynote for CES it would be in the capacity as Tech Czar for the next administration…
WRONG!
While anything would be better than listening to the dual Microsoft airbags of Gates and Ballmer, I don’t see Apple heading there soon for reasons mostly already stated and because I believe they’ve become popular and widespread enough that it’s not really necessary to promote products a few times a year when they have as many retail stores as they currently have, all of which promote Apple’s brand all the time all over the world. But that might just be me. I’m sort of coffee-deprived right now.
I think this is very likely. More exposure to non-Apple customers. Apple would clearly benefit from participating on par with other makers instead of being perceived as a separate and “different” entity. Too many potential customers today view Apple as a religion/sect rather than just another product choice among many. In the past Apple had to rally their own to survive but today is a different story where Apple clearly wants broader appeal, hoping their products are given equal considerance on par with HP, Toshiba, Dell etc.
Microslug has a hammer that they bang against their users heads. That’s the thunder.