Consumer Electronics Show Thrives in Uncertain
Times
For the press, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas
starts a day earlier than for other showgoers. While the exhibitors frantically bash the
last few nails into their booths, the journalists attend a round of media events put on by
some of the biggest companies in the show. This year, that meant that most of us arrived
sometime on Sunday, January 6, to be ready for the press conferences on the 7th. The
official show went from Tuesday, January 8 to Friday, January 11, the first time CES has
ever been held entirely on weekdays.
One thing that many of my colleagues noted before the show
opened was how empty the town seemed. Instead of casinos we had to elbow our way through,
as in past years, there was lots of space to get around. And traffic on The Strip was
positively civilized.
All of that gave rise to some speculation that CES would be
a repeat of Comdex last November, where estimates of the reduction in attendance ranged
from 50 to 70 percent. The more optimistic suggested that this show was a further two
months removed from September 11, and people were gradually returning to the air. Even
more optimistic, at least in public, were the show organizers -- The Consumer Electronics
Association -- who confidently predicted a turnout of 110,000 people, about on a par with
the past couple of years.
Seasoned Vegas hands know that to get a handle on such
matters, you ask the cab drivers. In this case, although they uniformly condemned Comdex
as a disaster, they generally figured this show would be okay.
In the end, they turned out to be right. According to
figures released after the show, some 97,000 attendees roamed the aisles of the various
show venues. That was down from last year and the year before, but on a par with 1999 --
not a bad number, considering the climate of apprehension.
The CEA's president and CEO Gary Shapiro with Bill Gates. Photo courtesy cesweb.org.
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One reason is that, although the show includes exhibitors
from all segments of the electronics industry -- some 1800 of them -- it has always been
driven mostly by the home-entertainment electronics business. Bill Gates may make an
annual opening address, but the main floor of the show is dominated by the likes of
Panasonic, Sanyo and Sharp.
That predominance of audio and video companies had a strong
effect on the success of the show because those were among the few electronics segments in
the U.S. that did very well over the holiday season. Journalists covering the event
develop a sixth sense for the mood of the show, and most agreed that this one was upbeat.
Still, things got off to a slow start for some companies,
even in the A/V business, because of the physical changes in the show. The Las Vegas
Convention Center has almost doubled in size since the 2001 show, and the home-theater
companies, who had exhibited in the Hilton next door for years, were summarily assigned to
one of the new halls, where their customers had some trouble finding them, at least at the
beginning of the show. Many exhibitors had had the same locations for years, and their
visitors could find them easily; now they had to search.
Likewise the IT, communications and games companies, many
of which had exhibited in the Sands Convention Center across town, now found themselves in
the cavernous new hall.
By the second day of the show, the traffic flow had reached
these new areas and the concerned exhibitors cheered up. For dealers and other show
attendees, the consolidation of most of the show in one place made getting around much
easier, and it was much more likely that all their suppliers and potential suppliers were
in the same building.
Maybe it was not surprising, though, that there were no big
technological breakthroughs -- on the scale of the introduction of DVD, say -- given the
industry caution after the dot-com blowup and the economic downturn. Certainly there were
lots of new products, and new combinations of, but it was really a show about evolution,
not revolution.
Most of all, as it turned out, it was about reassurance.
Showgoers came away with a feeling that things are picking up and that the good times will
return sooner rather than later.
The evolution of a consumer electronics institution
As the aircraft approached McCarran International Airport
early last month, I realized that I had been making this trek for 25 years. In 1978, the
first Winter Consumer Electronics Show was held in Las Vegas, and it has been an annual
event ever since.
In fact, the show is even older than that. For some 25
years -- until 1994 -- the "real" CES was held in June at Chicago’s
McCormick Place on the Lake Michigan waterfront. Not long after the show moved there from
New York, the organizers launched a more modest winter version. That was held not in the
cavernous McCormick but in the basement exhibit area of the Conrad Hilton Hotel.
It never amounted to much. In those days the cutting edge
of technology was audio -- not even audio/video yet -- and the hi-fi companies stayed away
from the winter show in droves. As a consequence, most of the exhibitors were hawking
calculators, phones and the like.
I attended that show for some five years running, but by
the end I was catching a flight to Chicago in the morning, spending a couple of hours at
the show and then flying home later the same day, sometimes in time for dinner. The only
reason I put myself through this is that there were invariably one or two items of
interest, hidden amidst the hokey merchandise, so I couldn’t afford to miss the event
entirely.
In the months leading up to the 1977 version, show
management announced that would be the last winter show. During my flying visit, however,
they recanted and announced that there would, in fact, be a 1978 show, but that it would
be held in Las Vegas.
That first western show was not particularly auspicious.
The Convention Center was only a fraction of its current size, and even then one end of
the exhibit hall was curtained off because of the small number of exhibitors.
A surreal aspect of that show was that the Center’s
lobby opened directly on a circular arena with a basketball court in the middle, and at
least one game was played during the show.
The Vegas show took some time to develop, mainly because
the audio companies were fond of the Chicago event and took some time to warm to the new
venue. But as other electronics segments became involved, Vegas’s star rose. Perhaps
more than anything, however, was that chains and department stores became a greater and
greater part of the retail mix, and June was just too late for them. Sometime in the
mid-1980s, Vegas became the main show.
The summer show lasted until 1994. The final one was very
reminiscent of the first Vegas effort because, by then, it could fill only part of one of
McCormick’s several halls, the other portion being curtained off.
But CES, wherever it has been held, has always been a place
you could go to see all the toys. More important, however, has been its role as a
barometer of the attitudes and mood of the industry.
...Ian G. Masters
ian@mastersonaudio.com
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