CES 2012 Will Be Microsoft’s Last

In a bit of surprising news, it looks like CES 2012 is going to be Microsoft’s last. As the company has featured its products at the last 14 and dominated the main hall next to Intel for as long as I’ve been attending the show, this move is an interesting one. On the official Microsoft blog, Microsoft’s Corporate VP made it clear that the timing of the show just doesn’t align well to its product launches. The opposite could be said about Intel, which traditionally launches its products right around CES time.

There’s also the fact that Microsoft gets the word out about its products to consumers many other effective ways, so the company’s presence at CES just isn’t as beneficial today as it once was. Personally, I never visited Microsoft’s booth because it was rare when something was being shown off that I wasn’t already aware of. I am sure I wasn’t alone, and this fact agrees with Microsoft’s timing complaint.

Microsoft isn’t the first to back out of such a large show, as Apple did the same thing a couple of years ago with MacWorld. Sometimes, when you’re getting enough publicity as it is, it’s a little hard to justify spending so much money and time (the latter of which is likely more valuable to Microsoft) partaking in shows like these. You can be sure the company will still be attending or running other smaller more focused trade shows, however.