Las Vegas – This year’s Consumer Electronics Association show in Las Vegas, NV, dubbed the Consumer Electronics Show or CES for short, drew 110,000 people.
While many trade shows would consider that audience a rousing success, for the CES show that is a decrease of 22% over last year’s attendance of just over 141,000. But while some industry insiders are saying that the decline in attendance over the past couple of years is an indication that the show is losing its popularity, the organizers of CES beg to differ and have a very different view on the attendance at this year’s show. They are saying that the thinning of the herd that normally comes to the CES show was on purpose and we should look for more thinning over the next few years.
“Our board concluded that it is essential to have the right people at CES” CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro was quoted as saying after this year’s decline in attendance. “Board members reported getting more business done this year than at any prior show” Shapiro concluded. There may be some truth to this as this year’s CES show did not show signs of holding back anything. There were many tech gadget debuts at this year’s CES and Microsoft even chose this year’s CES to unveil their new Windows 7 operating system. The crowds were smaller and getting around the show, and Las Vegas, was much easier for the people that were there to do business.
In November the CEA instituted a new $100 pre-registration fee that they said was designed to keep attendance limited only to those people that were going to take the show seriously and come to do business instead of wander around and just take in the show as many participants are prone to do.
Those that participated in this year’s CES remarked that they were better able to conduct business at this year’s show than in previous years. One participant said that their company set up 450 appointments for the CES and every appointment went off without a hitch.
The participant also went on to say that all the appointments happened at the CES which they had indicated would have been impossible in previous years. With an effective thinning of the herd and weeding out the wanderers and with business results like those being reported from this year’s show maybe the CEA is on the right track.