Microsoft's CES exodus: Non-event or major moment? | Challengers - CNET News

Now that Microsoft has declared that 2012 will be the last year that it has a booth at the Consumer Electronics Show and gives the conference's first keynote address, there are two possible scenarios that could play out.

Here's the boring one: Nothing much happens. In 2013, some other large tech company happily snaps up the prime show-floor acreage that Microsoft has freed up. Someone other than Steve Ballmer does a big keynote the night before the show opens. CES, in other words, just keeps on being CES.

Here's the more eye-opening possibility: Microsoft starts a trend. The fact that it's decided that it can live without a CES presence gives other big tech companies permission to consider the same move. Some of them pull out of the show. Others follow. We're left with a CES that's far tinier than today's Vegas blockbuster.

Maybe, in a few years, we'd be left with no CES at all.

Microsoft's CES exodus: Non-event or major moment? | Challengers - CNET News