Why I Am Passing on CES

A few months ago, as I was slowly recovering from illness, I assumed I would be unable to go to CES. The recovery came, but I found it hard to change my mind. My official excuse was CES would be exhausting, and it would. But it is looking like there will be a distinct shortage of news in Las Vegas next week. While CES still has reason for others, from meeting with manufacturers and vendors to seeing hundreds of obscure Chinese products, I’m still looking for news.

It’s not yet clear whether this is simply a weak year–though the second weak year in a row–or the beginning of a permanent decline in the show. There clearly has been a basic change in how major manufacturers approach it.

Another Apple move. Like so many other things, the change starts with Apple. When the rest of the industry crammed into Comdex and CES, Apple dominated the Macworld Expo–at its peak in San Francisco in the winter and Boston or New York in the summer. Starting in 2009, Apple decided it no longer needed IDG/Macworld and from 2010 onwards, it announced new products only at its own exclusive company events.

In 2013, Microsoft, which had a huge display and dominated CES with an opening keynote by Bill Gates and later Steve Ballmer, pulled out. It too found it could do better launching new items, such as the Surface, at its private events. Lenovo will likely be the only important PC maker on the show floor. Hewlett-Packard and Dell have disappeared.

The shift of the product interest from PCs to phones also hurt CES. The show that matters for phones is the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February and there is no desire to scoop MWC in January. (The success of MWC has also clobbered the U.S. CTIA show)

TV Is Back in Charge. The absence of computer companies has turned much of CES back to the traditional focus on consumer electronics, particularly televisions. The problem is there is painfully little to talk about. The last two TV breakthroughs were 3D displays and curved screens. Both got extensive coverage, especially 3D, but neither won much support from customers.

This year, the TV news is 4K displays. Two problems. There is essentially no 4K content, similar to one of the problems of the 3D market. The industry is making 4K movies for theaters, but the staggering strain on the network make it very hard to stream content to homes, even if there were a demand. Second, the full advantage of a 4K display requires a very big screen, one few homes have space or budget for.

There will be a flood of reports from Las Vegas. CES will be filled with hundreds of journalists, especially from the hungry online services. But I fear we are not going to see a lot of announcements that readers, or customers, really care about. I’ll be displeased if I miss big news at CES, but it doesn’t seem likely I will.