The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new product announcements. CES rose to prominence after COMDEX was canceled.

History[link]

The first CES was held in June 1967 in New York City. It was a spinoff from the Chicago Music Show, which until then had served as the main event for exhibiting consumer electronics. The event had 17,500 attendees and over 100 exhibitors; the kickoff speaker was Motorola chairman Bob Galvin.^[1] 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, 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. However, 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, 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 Las 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.^[2]

Notable product introductions[link]

Products and technologies introduced at CES include:^[3]

Show highlights[link]

2004[link]

The Blu-ray Group held at CES the first U.S. press conference to promote the Blu-ray Disc format.^[4]

2005[link]

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 his demonstration of Windows Media Center resulted in a Blue Screen of Death,^[5] much to the amusement of the onlookers.

Samsung showed off a 102-inch (2.6 m) plasma television.^[6]

Zimiti Ltd (renamed Boardbug Ltd in 2007) won the "Best of Innovators"^[7] award for Personal Electronics. It is the only British company to have won this award.

2006[link]

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^[8] as well as many of the other manufacturer's speeches. The standards competition between HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc was conspicuous, with some of the first HD movie releases^[9] 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. Hillcrest Labs won the "Best Of Innovations" award in the video accessories category for software and hardware that allows a television to be controlled with natural gestures.^[10][11] 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.

2007[link]

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 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.

2008[link]

The 2008 exhibition was from January 7 through January 10, 2008 in Las Vegas with 141,150 attendees. Bill Gates gave the 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 from celebrities including Jay-Z, Steven Spielberg, Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and many others. Industry names such as Consumer Priority Service also made an appearance among others in the retail sector.^[12]

Panasonic attracted much attention by releasing a 150" Plasma TV, as well as a 50" TV as thin as 0.46 in. (11.6 mm).^[13]

2009[link]

The 2009 exhibition, held January 7–10, returned to the previous Thursday-Sunday schedule, and attracted 113,085 attendees. Among more than 2,700 exhibiting companies were approximately 300 first-time exhibitors.

Several highlights include organic light-emitting diode (OLED) televisions,^[14] the Palm Pre,^[15][16] pico projectors,^[17] the Marvell SheevaPlug plug computer,^[18] and 3D projectors.^[19]

The Minoru 3D Webcam, a USB webcam that is billed as the world's first stereoscopic 3D consumer stereo webcam won the "Fans Favorite" award.^[20] Dell introduced its Dell Adamo subnotebook.^[21]

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

CES 2009 suffered 22 percent or more attendance drop, which was attributed to the global financial crisis.^[22]

2010[link]

Attendees walking by the LG Electronics display at CES 2010

The 2010 exhibition was held January 7–10 and attracted more than 120,000 attendees.^[23]

Highlights include the Intel Infoscape, which is run on the Intel Core i7 processor. One computer ran two 7-foot (2.1 m) screens, displaying 576 cubes hooked up to 20,000 info sources, including 20 live video feeds. Visitors would touch one of the cubes, and an infobox displaying that content would come forward. One journalist explained, "The graphics on the giant screens were a tons of fun to move around with their uncanny quickness and smooth motion, and the whole thing felt super responsive, Giving us a peek into the future, it seemed a lot like that computer screen in the movie Minority Report. It was the most spectacular demo we saw at CES 2010."^[24][25]

Sustainable Planet grew by 40% in 2010.^[26]

2011[link]

The 2011 exhibition was held from Thursday, January 6 to Sunday, January 9.^[27] CESWEB is reporting that their pre-audit numbers show an attendance of 128,949.

Many tablets were introduced in 2011's show, such as the Motorola Xoom tablet, winning Best of Show,^[28] which runs Android Honeycomb. Many 4G phones were also unveiled at the show, including the LG Revolution, Samsung Infuse 4G, HTC Thunderbolt, Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, Motorola CLIQ 2, Motorola Droid Bionic, and Motorola Atrix 4G.

3D TVs were introduced by many giants, such as Mitsubishi's 92-inch model of its 2011 line up theater-sized 3D Home Cinema TVs.^[29] Toshiba also unveiled its Glasses Free 4K 3D TV prototype.^[30] Samsung announced the Plasma 3D HD TV series named D8000^[31] and LG introduced the LED 3D TV of its Infinia Nano series.^[32]

3net, a 3DTV channel co-owned by Discovery Communications, Sony, and IMAX, was previewed.^[33]

Microsoft demonstrated Windows running on an ARM processor.^[34]

2012[link]

The 2012 exhibition was held from Tuesday, January 10 to Friday, January 13. Microsoft released an official statement saying that CES 2012 will be Microsoft’s last appearance at the event.^[35][36] The show organizers claimed that 153,000 people attended the 2012 show, a 2% increase from the previous year and a new all time attendance record.^[37] Intel was caught falsifying a demo of their new Ivy Bridge processors^[38]. AMD demonstrated their new Trinity APUs^[39] .

AMTC was demonstrating this ‘Tier-2’ CE products (‘middleware’) featuring the Inview Technology platform. Inview claimed that its low processing and memory footprint means connected TV capabilities are available at low-cost, as the software is provided royalty free.^[40]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• CES 2011 Live Blogging

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Consumer electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, most often in entertainment, communications and office productivity. Radio broadcasting in the early 20th century brought the first major consumer product, the broadcast receiver. Later products include personal computers, telephones, MP3 players, audio equipment, televisions, calculators, GPS automotive electronics, digital cameras and players and recorders using video media such as DVDs, VCRs or camcorders. Increasingly these products have become based on digital technologies, and have largely merged with the computer industry in what is increasingly referred to as the consumerization of information technology.

The CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) estimates 2007 US Consumer Electronics sales at 150 billion dollars.^[1]

Consumer electronics are manufactured throughout the world, although there is a particularly high concentration of headquarters, factories, research and development activity in East Asia, especially in Japan.^[2] The latest consumer electronics are previewed yearly at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, at which many industry pioneers speak.

Trends[link]

One overriding characteristic of consumer electronic products is the trend of ever-falling prices. This is driven by gains in manufacturing efficiency and automation, lower labor costs as manufacturing has moved to lower-wage countries, and improvements in semiconductor design. Semiconductor components benefit from Moore's Law, an observed principle which states that, for a given price, semiconductor functionality doubles every two years.

While consumer electronics continues in its trend of convergence, combining elements of many products, consumers face different decisions when purchasing. There is an ever increasing need to keep product information updated and comparable, for the consumer to make an informed choice. Style, price, specification and performance are all relevant. There is a gradual shift towards e-commerce web-storefronts.

Many products include Internet connectivity using technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or Ethernet. Products not traditionally associated with computer use (such as TVs or Hi-Fi equipment) now provide options to connect to the Internet or to a computer using a home network to provide access to digital content. The desire for High definition (HD) content has led the industry to develop a number of technologies, such as WirelessHD or ITU-T G.hn, which are optimized for distribution of HD content between CE devices in a home.

Environmental impact[link]

Standby power used by consumer electronics and appliance while they are turned off accounts for 5 to 10% of household energy consumption, adding an estimated $3 billion to annual energy costs in the USA. "In the average home, 75% of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off."^[3]

See also[link]

Electronics portal

• Product teardown

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Consumer electronics