CES Background & Why We Won’t Attend This Year’s Show

CES 2024 starts on 9 January and ends on 12 January. This is one of the largest shows but we decided not to go this time, for the reasons that I will list below. 

I cannot say that I miss Las Vegas so much that I am anxious to attend CES. This year we decided that it isn’t worth the trouble and especially the money to attend this show, which is not for IT products only, but for any consumer product you can imagine. After all, the show’s full name is Consumer Electronics Show, which includes every product that addresses consumers, with IT parts being one category.

A little background on CES. It started in June 1967 in New York as a spinoff of the Chicago Music Show, which, despite its title, had served as the main event for showing consumer electronics. From 1978 to 1994, CES was held twice yearly, in Las Vegas in January and Chicago in June. After the Chicago show started to lose popularity (who wants to go to shows in the summer after all), eventually only the Las Vegas show remained, so since 1998, CES has been yearly.

Milestone IT Products Shown in CES

• 1977: Atari VCS
• 1979: Atari 400 & 800
• 1981: CD Player
• 1982: Commodore 64
• 1983: Atari 600XL
• 1984: Commodore Amiga
• 1985: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
• 1988: Tetris
• 1991: Game Gear

Some legendary IT products that shaped the future generation are listed above. Indeed, CES used to be a key show for the IT industry, but in time, it lost its appeal with Computex, held yearly in Taiwan, dominating the IT scene.

The main reasons that we avoid CES:

• It is a zoo. There are too many people and companies, and most are unrelated to IT.
• Most booths and showrooms are not in the main buildings but in hotels, meaning you must be on the road constantly.
• Everything in Las Vegas is super expensive, especially during the show days!
• For most of us, a very long journey is required to go to Las Vegas.
• Most IT brands won’t attend the show this year because of the increased cost.
• Traveling into the winter to the US to attend CES can be troublesome. Last time we lost a whole day in the UK because of the bad weather.

Although I would love a trip to the US and to visit another place besides Las Vegas, I don’t have the time, and I also don’t want to spend a fortune to cover CES. If anything exciting is introduced during the show, I will cover it based on the available information.