Consumer Electronics Show

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Consumer Electronics Show
Status	Active
Genre	Consumer electronics
Venue	Las Vegas Convention Center
Location	Las Vegas, Nevada
Country	USA
First held	1967
Organizer	Consumer Electronics Association
Attendance	140,000
Official website

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is a non-public trade show held each January in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association. At the show, many previews of products are introduced, or new products are announced. The show is held at the Las Vegas Convention Center with additional venues used for certain specialties. The CES is considered one of the major technology-related trade shows, after Comdex was cancelled.

Contents 1 History 2 Show highlights 2.1 2004 2.2 2005 2.3 2006 2.4 2007 2.5 2008 2.6 2009 3 Notable product introductions 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] History

The first CES was held in June 1967 in New York City. From 1978 to 1994, CES was held twice each year: once in January in Las Vegas known as Winter Consumer Electronics Show (WCES) and once in June in Chicago, Illinois, known as Summer Consumer Electronics Show (SCES).

The winter show was successfully held in Las Vegas in 1995 as planned. However, since the summer Chicago shows were beginning to lose popularity, the organizers decided to experiment by having the show travel around to different cities starting in 1995 with a planned show in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Unfortunately, the inaugural E3 gaming show was scheduled to be held on the West Coast that same weekend and many exhibitors protested, causing the Philly Summer CES show to be cancelled. The 1996 Winter show was again held in Las Vegas in January, followed by a Summer show this time in Orlando, Florida, however only a fraction of the traditional exhibitors participated. Again, the 1997 Winter show in Las Vegas was very successful. The next "Summer" show was scheduled to be held in conjunction with Spring COMDEX in Atlanta, Georgia, however when only two dozen-or-so exhibitors signed on, the CES portion of the show was cancelled.

In 1998, the show changed to a once a year format with Las Vegas as the location. In Vegas, the show is one of the largest, the other being CONEXPO-CON/AGG, taking up to 18 days to set up, run and break down.^[1]

[edit] Show highlights

[edit] 2004

The Blu-ray Group held at CES the first U.S. press conference to promote the Blu-ray Disc format. ^[2]

[edit] 2005

The 2005 exhibition was from January 6 to January 9, 2005, in Las Vegas. The event started off with a twist when the main keynote address by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates went wrong as Windows Media Center that was being demonstrated failed,^[3] much to the amusement of the onlookers.

Samsung showed off a 102-inch (2.6 m) plasma television.^[4]

Zimiti Ltd (renamed Boardbug Ltd in 2007) won the "Best of Innovators"^[5] award for Personal Electronics. It is the only British company to have ever won this award.

[edit] 2006

The 2006 International CES took place on January 5, to January 8 2006, at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Sands Convention Center, the Alexis Park Hotel and the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel. HDTV was a central theme in the Bill Gates keynote^[6] as well as many of the other manufacturer's speeches. The standards competition between HD DVD and Blu-ray was conspicuous, with some of the first HD movie releases^[7] and first HD players being announced at the show. Philips showed a rollable display prototype whose screen can retain an image for several months without electricity.

Attendance was over 150,000 individuals in 1.67 million net square feet of space making it the largest electronics event in the United States.

[edit] 2007

In a break from recent tradition, the 2007 CES event did not begin on a Thursday, nor span a weekend. It ran from Monday January 8 to Thursday January 11 2007. The venues also changed slightly with the high-performance audio and home theater expo moving from the Alexis Park venue to The Venetian. The remaining venues were the same as previous years: the Las Vegas Convention Center was the center of events, with the adjacent Las Vegas Hilton, and the Sands Expo and Convention Center hosting satellite exhibitions.

The location for the main keynotes was the other major change for 2007. Previously held at the Las Vegas Hilton's Main Theater, they staged for the first time at The Palazzo Ballroom in The Venetian. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, gave his ninth pre-show keynote address on the Sunday evening. The opening keynote was presented by Gary Shapiro (President/CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, which hosts the event), with Ed Zander, Chairman/CEO of Motorola. Other keynote speakers scheduled included Robert Iger from The Walt Disney Company, Michael Dell, founder of Dell Inc., and Leslie Moonves of CBS.

Finally, Industry Insider presentations moved to the Las Vegas Hilton, with contributions from Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia and John Chambers, CEO of Cisco.

In the gaming section for Windows Vista and DirectX 10, there were two games shown: Age of Conan and Crysis.

[edit] 2008

The 2008 exhibition was from January 7 through January 10, 2008 in Las Vegas. One of the highlights was Bill Gates' keynote speech in which he formally announced his retirement from his day-to-day duties at Microsoft. Along with the announcement, he presented a lengthy comedy skit on what his last day with Microsoft would be like, complete with cameos including Jay-Z, Jon Stewart, Slash, Brian Williams, Steven Spielberg, Bono, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George Clooney and Matthew McConaughey. The skit is much in the vein of cinematic films.

Panasonic attracted much attention in 2008 by releasing a 150" Plasma TV, as well as a 50" TV as thin as 0.46 in (11.6 mm). ^[8]

[edit] 2009

The 2009 exhibition returned to the previous Thursday - Sunday schedule; January 8 through January 11, 2009. Among the 2,700+ exhibiting companies were approximately 300 first-time exhibiting companies. Several highlights include OLED Televisions, the Palm Pre, a Pico Projector , a Plug computer, and a 3D Projector.^{[citation needed]} Dell introduced a new brand of laptops called Adamo (Latin for "I fall in love with").^{[citation needed]} The laptop focuses on high craftsmanship and portability as it is even thinner than the MacBook Air. The Minoru 3D Webcam, a USB webcam which is billed as the world's first 3D consumer webcam won the "Fans Favorite" award.^[9]

The game show Jeopardy! filmed one episode from the celebrity series and the 2009 Tournament of Champions in a new set at the Sony booth. The set was moved to their main studio at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California for their 26th Season.

CES 2009 suffered 22 percent or more attendance drop,^{[citation needed]} because of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Notable product introductions

Products and technologies introduced at CES include (in reverse chronological order):

[edit] See also

• CeBIT (Hannover)
• COMPUTEX (Taipei)
• IFA (Berlin)
• SIMO TCI (Madrid)
• GITEX (Dubai)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• CES Official Site
• Tips for attending the show at livedigitally.com
• Video Coverage of CES at Digitaltrends.com
• Live Coverage of CES at Engadget
• Video coverage of CES 2007 at video-blog.eu
• CES schedule Keynoters
• CES Video Podcast Center