Microsoft said on Wednesday that this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012) in Las Vegas will be the last time the company hosts a keynote or has a booth on the show floor. “We’ll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries, but 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 corporate vice president of corporate communications Frank Shaw explained in a blog post. Microsoft has worked with the Consumer Electronics Association, which hosts the annual show, for 20 years and said it looks forward to continuing to work with the group. It sounds as if the Redmond-based company will begin holding its own press conferences, similar to how Apple operates, in the future.
UPDATE: Microsoft also confirmed to Engadget that this year’s keynote “won’t [offer] signficant news, but more of a wrap up of the strong year the company has had in its consumer sector.” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will focus “quite a bit on Windows Phone and the Xbox / entertainment story” in addition to “momentum from across the company for Windows, Office, Bing, etc.,” during his 2012 keynote.
[Via ZDNET]
