Scott Wingo Business: Microsoft, CEA Take Different Views on CES Pullout

Microsoft sparked a tech-world furor Dec. 21 with the announcement that, starting in 2013, it will decline to provide a keynote speech or booth at the Consumer Electronics Show.

"We have decided that this coming January will be our last keynote presentation and booth at CES," Frank Shaw, Microsoft's corporate vice president of corporate communications, wrote in a posting that day on The Official Microsoft Blog. "We won't have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don't align with the show's January timing."

Microsoft will continue to participate in CES, he added, "as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries."

Indeed, CES doesn't always coincide with Microsoft's timing for its more high-profile releases. For example, at the 2011 edition of the show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used his keynote to hint at Microsoft's movement into tablets with Windows 8, but the company nonetheless chose to wait for several more months before providing a glimpse of the operating system at work.

However, executives at the Consumer Electronics Association, which runs CES, seem to dispute Microsoft's pullout as unilateral. Jason Oxman, the CEA's senior vice president of industry affairs, told The New York Times Dec. 21 that Microsoft's ending its show presence was more of a mutual decision. "From our standpoint, it was the right decision as well."

According to Oxman, the CEA wanted a new company for that opening keynote slot long held by Microsoft. The newspaper paraphrased him as saying the split with Microsoft "had not been acrimonious."

For its part, Microsoft could use Ballmer's 2012 CES keynote (if not its significant presence on the show floor) to show off some of the Windows 8 tablets in development. But after that, it seems, all such announcements and unveilings will come on Microsoft's terms. Whether that dampens the ability of CES to draw industry buzz remains to be seen.

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