I entered the 2024 CES show through my usual \u201csecret\u201d way that avoids the crowds. And as I walked to the North Hall through the Westgate hotel, I was excited to see that the empty \u201cfor two years\u201d Asian electronic component manufacturers hotel convention halls were full. So, fingers were crossed that the show was going to be memorable. And it was \u2026 but not in a good way.<\/p>\n
Without any exaggeration, the entirety of the show was utterly dominated by China \u2026 probably around 90 percent. Even last year\u2019s show seemed more normal with many major companies attending than the 2024 CES with larger attendance. The lack of major players in so many different categories was startling. The lack of almost ALL major players, combined with the show being flooded<\/em> with Chinese companies that no one in the western world has probably heard of, was shocking. The China virus, even after three years, still continues to hurt the show in countless ways. Regardless of whether the virus release was intentional or not, very obviously someone in China made the decision to flood CES with Chinese companies as a show of power.<\/p>\n The few major companies that did display had unimpressive, sparsely stocked products to show and virtually no one actually there from the company. Some displays were so bad that I wondered who within those companies \u201cgreen lit\u201d the booths. Both Sony and Samsung, two of the three largest displays, literally had nothing that wasn\u2019t shown in previous shows. Perhaps that\u2019s why no one of any stature that actually worked for those companies attended and manned their booths. The only other major display, LG, had a lackluster booth as well, but seemed they at least tried a bit more to be interesting. Bear in mind, this was amazingly obvious after only 15 minutes in the largest building \u2013 the Central Hall.<\/p>\n Traditionally, the junk of the show (toys, bottle openers, cheap Bluetooth speakers, children\u2019s record players, etc.) were kept in the extreme back of the hall away from the real show. However, this year it was front and center, and it screamed that the 2024 CES show was in serious trouble. The only companies of serious note to attend were: Canon, Nikon, LG, Sony, Samsung, Ring, Google, Amazon and BMW \u2026 while there were a few more large companies to attend, their displays were so incredibly lackluster\/ridiculously small, that it simply doesn\u2019t merit mention as an attendee.<\/p>\n Some displays were so sparsely filled, like the Sony area (about the size of a small grocery store), that I\u2019m guessing there were about a dozen or so items to see. ALL of them were completely boring\/old and the vaporware BEV car appeared to be the same one they\u2019ve been showing for the last few years. Even if it was brand new \u2026 from my perspective, it was impossible to tell as it looked so uninspired\/tired. From what I could tell, they didn\u2019t actually show anything new \u2026 essentially only rehashed stuff they\u2019ve been making for years and years.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what this bodes for future CES shows, but with certainty, there undoubtedly were discussions among the major players who did and didn\u2019t attend, about this fiasco. What I can<\/em> say with unwavering accuracy, is that if China is allowed to be the overwhelmingly dominant force in the show, CES is doomed. Without the largest tech companies showing their innovation and demonstrating their prowess in full, it\u2019s only a short matter of time before CES ceases to exist. As CES sits now, it\u2019s acting as nothing more than a mouthpiece for Communist China \u2026<\/p>\n I did find a single silver-lining in the dark cloud that was the 2024 CES \u2026 there were several times more displays serving gourmet coffees than ever before \u2026 If only there had been a good use for that caffeine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I entered the 2024 CES show through my usual \u201csecret\u201d way that avoids the crowds. And as I walked to the North Hall through the Westgate hotel, I was excited to see that the empty \u201cfor two years\u201d Asian electronic component manufacturers hotel convention halls were full. So, fingers were crossed that the show was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2529,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions\/2529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}