Why you shouldn't care about CES

By Preston Gralla

Microsoft's decision to pull out of the Consumer Electronics Show after this year was the right one and the harbinger of things to come. The show, originally designed to show off technology like TVs and stereos has become increasingly irrelevant in a world of around-the-year product breakthroughs.

You'll read lots of news this week about CES product announcements. Plenty of it will be interesting; other of it not so much. But what you likely won't read about are big blockbuster products being announced, like the iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire, NOOK Tablet, or Kinect. Don't expect to hear about new products that truly change the direction of technology.

It's been that way for years, and the show will become even more irrelevant over time. The New York Times has it right when it writes that:

...the most important developments in the electronics business are no longer coming from the makers of television sets and stereos that have been most closely identified with the show since it started in 1967.

And as the industry and its trade show have grown, the need for buzz and branding has become more acute. The most innovative players -- like Apple and Amazon -- need to stand out from the crowd and so have chosen to introduce their products at smaller, more narrowly defined conferences and company-only events.

As the Times also notes, CES takes place at the absolutely worst time of year, after the holiday spending and buzz over consumer electronics is gone, and at the slowest time of the year for consumer electronics purchasing. Here's what John MacFarlane, the chief executive of Sonos, which makes spectacularly good wireless speaker systems, told the Times:

"Why would you ever release things just in front of the slowest six months of the year?"

Consider that the Sonos speaker system is exactly the kind of product CES was designed to highlight. A decade ago, Sonos dropped out. If the show has lost Sonos, many others can't be far behind.

There will still be a need for a CES-type show, but with a different focus. It will be for deal-making and for retailers to get a look at new product lineups, not to build buzz. MacFarlane, for example, goes to the show for those reasons, but Sonos doesn't exhibit.

All this is to the good. Technology develops so quickly that once-a-year blockbuster shows no longer make sense. Each year brings several new generations of smartphones, tablets, and other great pieces of technology. Once-a-year announcements just aren't enough.