World’s biggest tech trade show struggles to stay sharp in cut-throat business

THE world’s biggest technology trade show will feature razor-thin laptops, powerful smartphones and flat-screen TVs, but talk in the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) halls, which kicked off last night, may focus on whether the show itself has a long-term future.

Apple, which has set the consumer electronics agenda for the past decade, does not even attend the show. Microsoft Corp, desperately trying to catch up, is making this show its last. It has been a few years since Las Vegas-based CES had the “wow” factor.

“There’s a lot of hype. The promise exceeds the deliverable a lot,” said Todd Lowenstein, portfolio manager at HighMark Capital Management. “I take an interest in it only to the extent that there’s market-moving information that comes out of there, which I find is rare.”

Steve Jobs’s stylish and dramatic product launches came to dominate the popular tech world, and rivals are looking to copy that outside of the hubbub of CES in Las Vegas.

“A lot of companies are trying to imitate Apple’s success in a lot of areas, and one area where Apple has been extremely successful is in controlling its message by controlling the event and the timetable of its announcements,” said Avi Greengart, research director for consumer devices at Current Analysis, a business intelligence firm.

Microsoft, which is trying to win back its technology crown from Apple and Google, has long said that the CES in early January does not fit its product release timetable, meaning it has little new to share in the opening keynote, which has for years been given by chief executive Steve Ballmer.

“Microsoft can do this on their own, they don’t need CES,” said Hanson Hosein, a specialist in technology and media at the University of Washington in Seattle.

This year, the buzzwords look similar to last year, including “connected,” and “voice recognition,” in new phones and tablets, in cars or even watches.

“This year there’s going to be a focus on connectivity and mobility that continues the momentum we’ve seen for the past few years, even though we may not see quite so many big announcements by (mobile) carriers as we did last year,” said Ross Rubin, executive director, Connected Intelligence, at retail research firm NPD Group.

The latest light and thin laptops, which Intel has dubbed “Ultrabooks,” are set to dominate the hardware displays, from Toshiba, Asustek Computer and Lenovo Group.

Tablets may take a backseat after dominating the show last year, as hardware makers lick their wounds after failure to match Apple’s all-conquering iPad.