“The largest trade show in the Americas must be a great place to show off new products, right? Wrong. The International Consumer Electronics Show is quickly becoming a launch pad for products that fall flat,” Peter Svensson reports for The Associated Press.
“When the annual conclave kicks off next week, organizers expect more than 140,000 people — roughly the population of Syracuse, N.Y. — to descend on Las Vegas,” Svensson reports. “They will mill around 1.8 million square feet of booths and exhibits, equivalent to 31 football fields.”
“The 2,800 or so exhibitors are hoping to set the tone for the year by showing off tons of tablet computers, throngs of 3-D TVs and untold numbers of slim, light laptops called ultrabook,” Svensson reports. “But a look back at the products heavily promoted at CES in recent years reveals few successes.”
Svensson reports, “In 2009, ‘netbooks’ — tiny, cheap laptops — were a hot category at the show. They did have a good year, but interest was already waning when Apple Inc. obliterated the category with the launch of the iPad in 2010. Another big, eagerly awaited launch at the 2009 CES was Palm Inc.’s webOS…”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “SamLowry” for the heads up.]
CES is where ideas go to die. Yes, some, like Kinect, survive. But most don’t —that’s the premise of the article. This trade show has got to be the single biggest embarrassment to all of Apple’s competitors, not just because the most-hyped, highly-showcased products fail spectacularly, but because of the implicit, blatant acknowledgement that Apple is the industry leader and without that, ideas are few and far between.
I don’t remember the Kinect launching or being announced at CES, though I don’t follow CES or Microsoft that closely. I vaguely remember it was announced in the Summer of 2010? Anyone else remember?
Yeah I just seen an article today about all of the vaporware Microsoft had in the years past. The Kinect was announced at CES per Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-ever-happened-to-all-those-products-microsoft-introduced-in-ces-keynotes-2012-1
Jane you got it right. It used to be a great show where people went to see what was coming out in the future but these days Apple has made yet another thing in life irrelevant. This time a consumer electronics show. I would say this is a fashion show for gadget peeps and retail buyers to see what to order and stock in their retail stores etc. However these days most products shown most likely 90+ % never make it past the booth. The rest are destined to be praised as the new king of the block to unthrone Apples latest gadget or idea by the all to willing sold out media outlets and computer rags. For those plastic slabs of ifakery that make it out of the gate are destined to be made obsolete by google who does not care or even better by the manufacturers who will chop the 700 price down 99.99 and call it a success when they sell out.
The reality is bestbuy and every other retailer learned a real lesson. Don’t stock your inventory with stuff you can’t sell. If there is no real demand then don’t get pulled in by these companies false promises of insane demand because some pc whore mag said it was better. Ala playbook, HP, toshiba and on and on. Where are they now in the dump, in the discount section of the computer store or lastly on eBay or Craigslist for practically nothing. The worst thing that was done was these innocent children got not what they asked Santa, mommy and daddy for they got a kindle fire or some other discount slab o crap. You should see all the people at bestbuy still returning all sorts of plastic slabs of electronic confusion in a box. Their children’s sorrows filled their young eyes with many tears and their parents ears enough for them to bring it back and get the good stuff. Unfortunately those scars run deep and will be with them for many years to come. Many will talk about this outright betrayal 10 years from now to their shrink when they are adults.
Save your kid the abuse in school, the beating on the playground and other kids taunting them ” iSlab uSlab they’re all crap but iPad”
Clearly I jest but I bet it’s happened or is going to.
Don’t give your kids junk they know better and their friends know better and it’s just an ordeal they don’t need better you put that money in their iPad fund piggybank and help them earn money to buy it overtime so they get what they what they need and can use. I’d rather get socks than a kindle fire perhaps a pink bunny suit with the attached bunny ears, feet and tail would be less humiliation.
From the article:
Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet did start to crack Apple’s hegemony late in the year, but it wasn’t shown at CES.
NO IT DIDN’T. Wrong market! They don’t compete. This fact has now soundly been proven, with a deluge of even more supporting marketing data yet to come. Same old clue: How is the Barnes & Noble Color Nook doing as a result of the Fire? Hmm? Hello in there!!!
TechTardiness is rampant.
“TechTardiness” – nice coinage. Yours? : )
I agree that the CES has a pretty bad track record. Even with those overpaid, circus clowns of G4 TV or whatever name that channel goes by, hyping the products really puts people off unless your into vapors ware.
Trade shows can have their uses. I like to go periodically to see what is about and what potential solutions exist out there. It usually ends up with me renewing subscriptions etc. I have never been to CES, but would like to one day. Not necessarily for the Apple clones but for the technology in general. It makes getting something new, less of a gamble if you had a try out at a trade show.