Microsoft’s CES 2012 keynote will be its last

In a post over on the official Microsoft Blog, Frank Shaw, VP of Corporate Communications at Microsoft, revealed that Microsoft’s keynote at CES 2012 will be the last one for the company.

Microsoft has been a fairly big part of CES for many years now, so the company’s decision to bow out comes as a bit of a surprise. So why is Microsoft backing out of CES 2013 and beyond after all of these years?

According to Shaw, it all simply comes down to timing. CES takes place very early on in the year, and the event’s schedule isn’t in line with Microsoft’s announcement schedule.

Microsoft may be putting an end to keynotes and booths at future CES events, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have at least some presence at the event. Shaw explained:

“..we have decided that this coming January will be our last keynote presentation and booth at CES. 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,”

Shaw didn’t provide specifics on what Microsoft’s plans for future events entail, but he did suggest that Microsoft was looking into possibly cooking up an event of their own.

“As we look at all of the new ways we tell our consumer stories – from product momentum disclosures, to exciting events like our Big Windows Phone, to a range of consumer connection points like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft.com and our retail stores – it feels like the right time to make this transition.”

Source: Microsoft (via AllThingsD)