Will customers pony up to be pitched? Already the show has logged hundreds of calls and advance ticket sales from locales as distant as California and New York. As many as 100,000 visitors are expected, and similar shows in Tokyo and Berlin annually attract several times that number. That’s not to mention the 55,000 or so regular attendees who will leave more than $40 million in Chicago’s pockets during the show’s four-day run-and place orders for $12 billion or so in merchandise.
If business is so good, in fact, why open the doors to the unruly public? Simple: consumer-electronics sales are soft, and there’s no killer product akin to the VCR on the horizon. High-definition television, touted as the next great thing, is a slow starter in Japan and won’t be available in this country until mid-decade. So Summer CES is an attempt to make Americans into more voracious gadget consumers by going straight to the customers.
What are the temptations this year? Manufacturers are coy about previewing products prior to showtime, but insiders expect mostly improvements on a theme. Thomson Consumer Electronics will be showing 16-to-9 television-sets with extra-wide screens, offering the same width-to-height ratio as movie screens. Currently, movies are chopped off at the sides for the squarer, 4-to-3-ratio picture tube; in a panoramic shot from “Dances With Wolves,” at home you don’t get as many Indians on the horizon. The new sets, already on sale in Europe, cure that problem-for about $5,000. You’ll also need special videodiscs, in so-called letter-box format, that show the entire width of a movie.
One can always stick with the old TV and teach it to do something new. In Chicago, Kodak will push Photo CD. By midsummer you’ll be able to take your vacation snapshots with standard film, and the photofinisher can return not only slides or prints but a compact disc as well. Put the compact disc on a special $400 Kodak player (which also plays audio discs) and you can view the pictures on your TV, switching images by remote control. Ultimately, you can have an entire photo album–complete with your own soundtrack-on a single CD.
Apple Computer, at CES for the first time since the early 1980s, will announce a top-secret new product code-named Newton–a handheld electronic tablet on which you write with a pen, storing telephone numbers, addresses, notes and memos. The futuristic-looking little device even sends faxes and dials the phone. Newton, on sale next year for less than $1,000, is first in a line of products Apple calls personal digital assistants, or PDAs.
More initials will arrive with two new recording formats. A digital compact cassette (DCC) records with the clarity of a compact disc on a cassette similar to those used today; your old cassettes will thus be playable on the machine as well. Sony’s Mini Disc (MD), on the other hand, records on new, 21/2-inch discs designed for portables and car stereos. Since the last great recording acronym–digital audio tape (DAT)–received a lukewarm reception from consumers, retailers are making no predictions about these latest rearrangements of the alphabet.
Finally–and rather tardily considering the product’s initial appearance, at the 1964 World’s Fair–AT&T will show the VideoPhone. Starting this summer, for $1,499 or a rental fee of $30 a night, you can reach out and stare at someone over regular telephone lines at standard telephone rates, assuming your object of interest also has a VideoPhone. The 3 1/2-inch color image moves a bit like Max Headroom, but AT&T already reports interest from both doting grandmothers and parents with distant college students. Guys, now you have to tell Dad about getting that earring.
CES exhibitors aren’t universally happy about opening their doors to the public, and some big names like Sanyo and Pioneer will retreat to private hotel suites. “With, say, 60,000 people walking through there,” says one CES veteran, “you can bet that there aren’t going to be a whole lot of Walkmans still lying around at the end of the weekend.” Another drawback: exhibitors like to show off their most advanced products, often not destined for dealers’ showrooms for months or years. That’s great for establishing technological superiority but terrible for consumers who already wonder if they should wait before buying their next gadget.
Will CES continue the open-door policy? “Ask me June 1,” says Gary Shapiro, the Electronic Industries Association vice president in charge of the extravaganza. In any case, the bigger, even gaudier CES in Las Vegas next January will be restricted to the trade. That means the public won’t see the biggest retailers placing their bets for Christmas 1993. And they’ll also miss that show’s adult-video section, where marginally clad porno starlets autograph photos for long lines of admirers, a perennial reminder for show attendees that even when the gadgets aren’t moving, there’s always something that sells.
