Microsoft Saying Farewell To CES After 2012, Won’t Agree To 3-Year Deal

Microsoft has decided to end it’s CES run in 2012 and according to one report the company was not “forcefully rejected” as some claims have stated but rather chose to leave rather than pay a higher per year price with a 3-year contract requirement.

According to The Verge Microsoft simply realized that the January event in Las Vegas doesn’t align with its own product release. The report also states that CES was “playing the field” in the hopes of finding an alternate to Microsoft which led the company to rethink how long they wanted to stay in the event.

It’s also believed that Microsoft developers didn’t feel as if they were getting a good “return on investment” from the trade show.

Other large company’s, most notably Apple has long used its own clout to hold conferences specific to new company products, allowing them to release products on their own schedule which in turn gives them more control over a products marketing strategies.

With Microsoft bowing out with a one-year extension it appears on paper at least that the software giant is leaving the event on good terms.

As a regular visitor to the CES trade show I can’t say the Microsoft exit surprises me, their display, while typically one of the biggest at the show has always lacked the pizzazz of other company offerings and Steve Ballmers keynote speeches over the last two years have bordered on boring as he spouted out what thousands of developers, consumers and reporters already knew about Microsoft and their product lines.

Are you surprised to learn that Microsoft will not appear at the 2013 CES trade show?