CES 2009 Shrinks With Dwindling Economy

nandemoari writes "Not long after we first heard murmurs Microsoft may be ready to lay off as much as 17 per cent of its workforce, the popular Consumer Electronics Show, held every year in Las Vegas, is rumored to be shrinking alongside the global economy. The Consumer Electronics Association, host of the CES, estimates that the numbers of both exhibitors and visitors will be down in 2009. The CEA expects about 130,000 people will attend this year, down 11,000 from last year. And about 2,700 exhibitors are expected to attend, down from 3,000 in 2008."

Yes, but...

Dwindle the numbers of exhibitors and visitors all you want, but if you cut back on the booth babes, you've crossed the line...

It's much worse than you think

because most of the exhibitors signed up long before the credit crunch started to bite. I'd expect to see a drastically reduced show next year. But at least Apple might attend for a change.

... In inverse proportion to Homeland Security

I'm a U.S. citizen who has been residing abroad for the last several years. One thing I have noticed, in speaking with friends from all over the world, is how much more difficult it is to attend family ad professional functions in the US. People have to apply for transit visas, they have to get fingerprinted, have more and more data entered into federal databases. More and more people seem to being denied entry, too. I've heard of nominees for the Latin Grammies who were denied entry because they were coming from Cuba, Europeans who were denied entry because they overstayed a visa a decade ago by two days. Other governments are getting more hostile to travellers, too; please don't get me wrong. (rant=on)However, the US goes a magnitude beyond most other Western governments. The UK seems to be the only other western country that treats business persons, shoppers, etc., whose only fault is being born on the wrong side of an arbitrary line in the sand, like criminals.
Of course because non-citizens can't vote, it's next to impossible to get this reported in media in the US, and policy will not loosen anytime soon. Of course, policymakers don't realize how much this hurts trade relations, tourism, etc.

Re:... In inverse proportion to Homeland Security

Don't let it worry you - I used to put GBP30,000 per annum into the US economy through business and pleasure visits. After getting detained by the idiot gestapo for actually following the rules, I stopped doing that. The business money now generates far more return, and my vacations have taken me to more diverse places as a result.

Sure, the US economy and its victims have lost over $100,000 from me, but at least I'll never have to deal with the TSA again :)

To clarify why I was stopped and separated from my wife on her birthday, then kept away from her for several hours while she was not told anything, read on... I applied for a new passport because the US visa waiver programme requires that you have at least 6 months validity on your password on the date of entry. Mine would have had just under 6 months validity left for this trip, so 2 months before travelling I applied for a new passport.

When I finally got someone from the SS to talk to me about why they were detaining me, we cleared it up pretty quickly:

Hitler: Why did you apply for a new passport when your old one was still valid?
Me: Huh?
Hiter: Your previous visits were on a different passport. That one would still have been valid. Why did you get a new one? What are you trying to hide?
Me: Uh, the old one would have only had 5 and a bit months left on it. Your visa programme says it has to be valid for at least 6 months
Hitler: What?
Me: Well, my old one wouldn't have enough months left valid to qualify for the visa waiver programme
Hitler: fx: looks at papers and wanders off

About 30 minutes later they finally cut me loose. And that's how the US economy lost $100,000 to date.

So what?

The lack of unabated growth in everything we do is not necessarily a sign of some impending doom.

Our culture seems to have this mentality that it's a bad thing whenever something isn't consumed more, or more popular this year than the last. But at some point in the long run, if it doesn't stop, things will be far worse. It's okay if fewer people don't go to CES this year...there's still next year. Plus can't people keep up-to-date online? Isn't that what the digital age is all about?

If you need a reality check re. growth, watch this professor's summary of how continuing growth is ultimately going to hurt us (as most of us at least recognize in an arms-length, academic way): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY [youtube.com]

The video is 8 parts (sorry) and mostly focused on energy/economy, but it's pretty interesting/eye-opening. Most people already recognize these issues, but mostly at an arms-length, academic level. This video really brings reality of our future into focus.

Re:So what?

People have that attitude because it has almost always heralded the downfall of the thing that has ceased to grow. Face it, our society is all about 'progress' and that means newer and better goods. If a company stops producing better goods, it'll have fewer customers. It's all downhill from there. Very few companies manage to recover after that.

As for the 'media' attention and craziness about it, I'm sick of it, too. I don't need journalists or bloggers telling me what I can already see. They seem to have forgotten that their job is to bring new information to people, not just talk about obvious information constantly. (Journalists, that is. Bloggers have always existed just to talk about themselves incessantly.)

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Wow, thanks. Very interesting videos.

Re:So what?

The lack of unabated growth in everything we do is not necessarily a sign of some impending doom.

It often is for publically traded companies.

If a company announces a 10% drop in earnings, you think the investors won't expect that to be made up by cost cutting (i.e., layoffs)? Management can't afford their share price to drop, so they're only too happy to accommodate.

What's more problematic is that investors demand ever-increasing numbers. If a company's performance is flat, investors are only too happy to take their money elsewhere.

That last point, incidentally, is one of the fundamental problems in the newspaper industry. Most newspapers have had (and continue to have) regular and respectable earnings. That's fine if the company is privately held, or owned and run by an enlightened and wealthy family, but it isn't good enough for Wall Street. Those newspapers that decided to go public have since discovered that painful truth.

So while you see no impending doom, others may. And if you don't think a drop of just a few points is no cause for worry, consider how you'd react if your boss decided to meet his budget by cutting your paycheck a few points every quarter and said, "No worries, mate. You're still employed and making money."

Re:So what?

You should maybe watch the video then...growth (in its various forms) has more implications on our future than just economics (i.e., survival). Economics has little purpose if the day comes around that we have no oil or energy left without sufficient alternatives (leaving us with severly limited productivity/mobility), no food to feed billions, and/or no safe climate to live in.

I've minored economics...it's a great subject, but as a predictor of the future, it's no better than a weather forecast...that is, it's only moderately accurate in the short term. What I think economics does best is fill-in blanks to explain past trends and observations (e.g., by allocating fictional/hypothetical values like 'opportunity cost' to explain why people make one choice over another), with the hopes of modelling what might happen in the future.

I wouldn't argue that we shouldn't take indicators into account in our decisions. But lets say this was the last CES, or the tech sector were to 'crumble'. If that happens, something else will take its place - unless we all collectively decide to sit around on our asses moping about the situation.

It's the price of success

Consumer electronics nowadays basically do everything consumers want, in an affordable way. As far as I can see there are currently something like 4 breakthrough technologies needed to change that, and they didn't happen last year:

• Roughly a doubling of battery capacity for the present size
• Affordable large panel OLED or equivalent displays
• Cheap A4/USL size electronic paper
• a really cheap and effective universal home automation system

Apple releasing a large laptop with a non-user-replaceable battery is a sign of desperation on the battery front, not success. LED backlighting is no longer an expensive technology and has found its way into netbooks, so a new technology is needed there to create significant improvement. And e-readers are just too small. Everything else really works well enough. Consumer electronics is getting to be like plumbing, or refrigerators, or cookers. You don't have Whirlpool fanboys or people who endless post on the Internet on the virtues of push fit versus compression joints. Perhaps it's a sign of maturity of the industry.

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Consumer electronics nowadays basically do everything consumers want, in an affordable way

Where's my robot maid that cleans and robot servant that empties the gutters and takes out the trash?

Robots!=consumer electronics

Well, treating this seriously for a few milliseconds, it's questionable whether robots are consumer electronics. Dishwashers and washing machines do some of the jobs originally done by human servants, but they are classed as "white goods", not electronics, because they mainly depend on motors and pumps for operation. Do you class a car as "consumer electronics"? However, the other answer to the question is, see my point 1 (batteries are a major stumbling block.) And the cost of motors, gears, servos, hydrau

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Hmm. Good questions [irobot.com], I don't know [irobot.com] perhaps we will have them in the future [irobot.com].

Snark aside, a robot of humanoid versatility would be nice. We have roombas, and dishwashers and things; but the transition cases(dishes from sink to dishwasher, unsticking stuck roomba) look like they'll be stubbornly human jobs for a while longer.

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You don't have Whirlpool fanboys or people who endless post on the Internet on the virtues of push fit versus compression joints.

Welcome to the internet [screwfix.com]. Please be sure to familiarise yourself with the safety information provided before posting such a silly idea again.

And there was much rejoicing

This is the sort of thing I'd expect to see cut back during an economic slump. Much better to reduce spending on trade shows (including sending people to them to look at booth babes) than to cut salaries and staff.

Yes, it may mean that some sales that would have been made at the trade show won't happen. Sorry, but when people are worried about how their going to eat they get less excited about mp3 players. Welcome to a cyclical industry.

Incidentally...

Not long after we first heard murmurs Microsoft may be ready to lay off as much as 17 per cent of its workforce...

This has been roundly dismissed by many sources at least as credible as the initial "murmurs". (e.g. "The latest to report on the possibility of layoffs at the software giant is the blog Fudzilla, which puts the number of job cuts at 15,000, or nearly 17 percent of Microsoft's worldwide operations.") We'll find out in a week, I guess.

Re:i'm suprised it's not more

You should be more sensitive. We just had a Macworld Keynote with none of the overdue iMacs, minis, or MacPros released, no new LCD, and no new iPhone. And no Steve. Why does food and shelter even matter?

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And don't forget; either Steve Jobs died or 4chan hijacked the livestream [techcrunch.com]...

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Speaking of important things, I wonder how the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo - running just up the street - will fare this year. Sure, consumer electronics are nice, but as we learn from Avenue Q:

Trekkie Monster: In volatile market, only stable investment is porn!

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I know that lipstick is a good investement in downturns (as women use make-up rather than new clothes to make a statement), as is cheap liquor. I wouldn't be so sure about porn, per say (as the internet undercuts it), but sex "equipment" might see an upsurge. (This is not investement advice.)

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In volatile market, only stable investment is porn!

A member of my family is a big name Hollywood director/producer. I asked him the other day how the economic downturn is affecting his industry. During the Depression the entertainment industry did fairly well, so I expected to hear things were fine.

Turns out I was wrong. Hollywood is hit as hard as everyone else. I'd expect the porn industry to be the same.

Re:i'm suprised it's not more

But you've got to remember, if you're seeing the economic slump from inside the US, you're seeing the worst of it by far.
Canada is sluggish, certainly, but not at all in the virtual free fall that the US seems to be getting. Parts of Europe are the same. The only two countries that really seem to be getting hit hard are the US and UK, although China's taking a bit of a beating, too.

Let's see...all the surveillance states are getting the worst of the economic fallout. Wonder if that means anything?

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Let's see...all the surveillance states are getting the worst of the economic fallout. Wonder if that means anything?

That correlation is not causation?

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Down 11000 from last year does not mean down from 11000 last year.

Either this article is wrong, or (more likely, as per usual), the Slashdot editors are asleep. :/

I vote the third option!

Re:Trade shows are less relevant

This is EXACTLY the correct answer. One of my larger CE clients is forgoing CES and NAMM this year. Why? They got a bigger marketing return from hosting a $300,000 invite-only party at the Hard Rock Hotel in July 2008, than from spending an equivalent amount of money at the 2008 CES and Winter NAMM shows...

.
Dollars are still flowing, they're just going to either smaller/up-and-coming shows, or to private/direct shows and efforts. CES has been about 3 times too big for the last 10 years; there is simply too MUCH of CES to make it relevant for most people, dealers, etc.

Best to break it in to about 5 different shows: Computers (bring back a real COMDEX), audio/video, telecom (including the 9,000 cell phone accessories guys on the 2nd floor of the convention center), home automation (really belongs at CEDIA anyway), and mobile electronics (which may be a better fit at SEMA).

When your show takes half the LV Hilton, 1/3rd of the Venetian, the Sands Convention Center, the entire LV Convention Center, and hundreds of additional off-site presentation and demo spaces, it's just too big. Running your own bus system for conventioneers should have been the first clue!