CES – Losers amongst the many Winners
I’ve spent the last several days in Las Vegas at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). A magnum event to be sure and one that you more than get your aerobic workouts just from all the walking you have to do around the place while checking out the vendor displays.
I found a lot of really interesting stuff. Some winning products and ideas, many of which I’ll write about in a trip wrap up column here shortly. Frankly, I find it better to present one long column than to keep coming out with little sound bites throughout the conference days when every other columnist is trying to out scoop the other for a few meager column inches of game. Their roll is important, but it’s not my karma to write that way.
As there were many winners at this conference, there were also some big companies that were seen as major losers. Let me explain. The CES conference has the largest product expo in one place, at one time, in the world. It’s an expo where attendees can look, touch, feel, see, play with, ask questions or anything else within reason, that comes to their minds. A large number of the attendees are people that are buying agents, or recommend products to their clients, associates and even the guy next door. They come to this conference with the reasonable expectation of being able to actually see the products that the industry is harping about. However, there were, yet again, a few companies that chose to hide themselves behind the walls and locked doors of the meeting room spaces on the expo floors. That companies like HP, Verizon, Palm, Lenovo and others intentionally chose to sequester themselves and their products from public scrutiny really didn’t settle well with some attendees, including this writer.
I have to agree with the attendees that were looking for things like: the latest in HP Tablet PC products and directions, updates on what’s happening with Verizon continuing to drag their feet on including the Palm Pre in their suite of offered phones, and Lenovo debuted the incredible U1 – but nobody outside of the selected few were able to even see it.
Frankly, companies that continue to hide their products behind closed doors, don’t give attendees the best and warmest fuzzy feelings about them or their product lines. Attendees were even heard to question if indeed these companies had reasons to hide their products and if they much ballyhooed items were really ready for prime time!
Maybe this will change next year. There’s always hope.
I’m Don Rima, and that’s the view, From Where I Stand
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