By Dave Sebastian
BU News Service
LAS VEGAS — More than 180,000 tech industry executives, analysts and investors are set to descend on Las Vegas, Nevada, from Jan. 8-11, for CES, the world’s largest consumer technology trade show.
It’s an annual showcase featuring announcements of new products that are slated to trend, with 32 product categories ranging from 3D printing to self-driving vehicles.
For both startups and established companies from around the globe, CES is a vast ground — 63 football fields large — for making their products known. Startups, such the 1,200 companies exhibiting at the show’s Eureka Park, vie for funding and new partnerships.
More than 4,500 companies will operate booths at the convention, about 18 times the number of exhibitors in New York during the first CES in 1967.
Attendees pay between $300 and $1,700 to get a first look at new products and technologies before they hit the market.
One major company that you won’t find at CES is Apple Inc., which opts to produce its own announcements of new products. However, CES attendees will see Apple throwing shade on its competitors’ struggles about data privacy in an ad plastered on the side of a hotel right next to the Las Vegas Convention Center, one of CES’s exhibition spots.
The ad reads: “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.”
Follow BU News Service’s coverage of CES to learn more about the newest — and wackiest — products of the year.
