CES: After keynote No. 9, Gates calls it quits
LAS VEGAS – Yep, after delivering the keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show eight times since 1994, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is giving up his annual role as technology seer for a life focused on his charitable foundation. If you hadn’t heard, Bill Gates is retiring from Microsoft, and he’s going out with a little humor. At CES he spoofed his rather eccentric and geeky personality with a video in which he called everyone from Bono to Hillary Clinton looking for some activity to occupy his time (to see the keynote Webcast see Microsoft’s Press Pass page).
Starting next year, we’ll have to listen to someone else’s vision of technology at CES. Maybe it’s blasphemous to say, but I think it’s for the best. Gates and Microsoft haven’t exactly been on the cutting edge of innovation of late. The company sells an awful lot of software, but the average person on the street stopped getting excited about the newest release of Windows in about 1995.
Frankly the most spectacular jumps in consumer electronics in recent years have not come from Microsoft. Apple gave us the portable digital music player. Microsoft gave us the Xbox, but only after Sony and Nintendo turned the game console into a massive global market. And in a technology closer to home, Microsoft’s probing into the mobile space has been mediocre at best–Palm invented the smartphone, while RIM and Apple perfected it for the enterprise and the consumer, respectively.
Sound like I’m Microsoft bashing? Perhaps I am a bit. But I’m not criticizing the company or its business model. It makes great products (well, some are greater than others) that people buy by the boatload. But it’s been quite some time since Microsoft came up with the next big thing. Just look at what Gates and Microsoft cohorts preached from the CES pulpit: social media, home networking, even video sharing. It looks neato, but it’s hardly a new gospel. We’ve been seeing the same stuff presented at conferences for years.
Maybe that’s the value of Gates’ keynotes. Just as Microsoft’s software might allow it to turn a cutting-edge innovation into a mass-market phenomenom, maybe Gates’ keynotes validate those innovations to the industry at large. If you saw Bill talk it up at CES, then you know the technology has legs. But maybe it’s time the keynote was delivered by a true visionary in the technology world instead of the industry’s most successful reactionary.
Keep tuned to Unfiltered this week. Associate Editor Sarah Reedy and I will be making daily updates to the blog.
Related Topics: Wireless, Unified Communications, IPTV, Broadband/FTTX, All Stories
January 7th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Best of luck in his endeavors! Maybe Bill Gates can incorporate Sports into his retirement and buy the Seattle Supersonics & Storm and keep them in Seattle.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Great article, what are you planning to cover for the rest of the days of CES? Anything of interesting going on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thurasday?? OR was Gates speech the peak highlight?
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