Despite the razzmatazz, glitz and booth babes, there is serious wheeling and dealing at the annual electronics show, in Nevada, writes Danny O'Brien
The Consumer Electronics Show may be set in the fantasy-like Las Vegas, but to the 2,700 companies that exhibit there, it's everything but a dream. Hanging over the razzmatazz of the event (celebrity impersonators, booth babes, and "tchotkes" galore), there's an air of grim, commercial reality when you walk the 518,000sq m (1.7 million sq ft) of floor space, watching each of these innovations rattling for attention.
This is a far rawer jungle than the high-street store or internet store selection will be. And it's certainly not a flattering light for a humble start-up to battle within. It can be a rude awakening for the typical R&D-heavy, idealistic dotcom start-up.
When the initial angel investor likes to hear airy mission statements to connect the world, or bring everyone together, and sky-high future potential, CES is, unpretentiously, about gadgets and gizmos that play to the common denominator.
An animatronic Elvis gets more coverage than a clever idea here. CES is about hard products, hard sold to a very hard market - the everyday consumer (represented by the 140,000 visitors to the show) and the bulk buyers who represent them. Start-up culture is all about small companies, run by almost childish whim. CES is where those small companies go to grow up: fast. You're not just competing with the big guys (Intel, Microsoft, Sony, Nokia and Motorola all launch big products here), you're competing with everyone for attention.
No wonder then that many companies try very hard not to get sucked in. Even Apple, that giant of consumer electronics culture, tries to separate itself from the danger by running its own competing MacWorld keynotes in parallel with the show (Jobs's iPhone was launched at the MacWorld show in San Francisco).
Nonetheless, few can run their own independent fan club as an alternative. And so, figures like Bill Gates and Google's founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page pay obeisance to the CES crowds, painting their airy visions of a software future, even as their executives are hammering out deals with the mass-purchasing moguls who drop by to survey the tech future.
And that's the other half of this show. Behind the booth babes and the hustle, it's the hotel rooms around the Las Vegas conference centre where the real action is.
The deluxe hi-fi and home entertainment vendors don't deign to emerge on the show floor; they demonstrate their multi-thousand dollar kits to select audiences in conference rooms. Higher up in the stakes, if they're lucky, small but original companies like Futiro and Red Mere will barely see their competitors, locked up as they will be in private discussions with interested parties off the strip.
And finally, at the very top edge, Vegas and the CES is neutral territory for the largest of technology's political animals.
Gary Shapiro, the president of the industry body that has thrown this party for 40 years, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), last year decided to go to war against the entertainment industry in Washington. In an unusual move, the CEA began its own grassroots campaign, aimed at marshalling its own customers to pressure Congress to challenge Hollywood's increasingly stringent copyright laws.
Here, he'll stand shoulder to shoulder with Disney's chief executive Robert Iger, showcasing the future. Behind closed doors, they're marking out the opposing sides of a fight to control the next US Congress.
Like the rest of Vegas, CES looks like fun - but it's the prize fights that pull the crowds. CES takes place in the doldrums of the consumer electronics market, just after the Christmas rush.
But it's the first big fight of the season. It's true that however well you do here, it's not real victory until it's on the shelves. But you haven't been blooded until you've duked it out with your competitors in Vegas.
