This year's CES 2022 is destined to be deserted.
In the past few days, AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft and other well-known enterprises have announced the use of online forms to participate in the exhibition, but also made the CES offline exhibition become a "dispensable" existence. (At least for the PC field)
The epidemic has affected the new supply chain system, which not only makes the lack of core a problem faced by many manufacturers, but also has a huge impact on offline exhibitions such as CES.
But it is undeniable that CES has added a lot of rich digital consumer goods to our lives in the past 50 years, and promoted the exchange of global technology culture.
(Revisit the CES of 2020)
From New York to Las Vegas to Asia
When it comes to CES, everyone's first impression is the "casino city" Las Vegas.
In fact, CES has changed its location many times throughout its history.
In 1967, the Electronics Industry Association (the predecessor of the Consumer Electronics Association) believed that "it was time for the industry to have its own exhibition", and CES was born.
As soon as the news broke, all the fast-growing sales organizations of the American brand giants and most of the large Japanese manufacturers decided to support CES.
With the help of the "East Wind" of that year's Chicago Music Exhibition, CES was officially held in New York in the form of ancillary events.
The first exhibition attracted more than 100 exhibitors, with a total of 17,500 participants.
The most high-profile products exhibited at that time were: the latest pocket radios and televisions with integrated circuits.
Motorola President Robert Galvin (son of Motorola founder Paul Calvin) served as the opening speaker.
What he spoke at the CES show is now not searchable, but that CES must have been lively and memorable.
On the evening of the opening ceremony, the organizers launched the "Waldorf Astoria Night". For just $10 per person, attendees can enjoy an hour-long open bar reception, a full dinner, and entertainment.
Between 1979 and 1994, the Consumer Electronics Show was held twice a year, the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (WCES) in Las Vegas in January and the Summer Consumer Electronics Show (SCES) in Chicago in June.
In 1979, Bill Gates also participated in CES for the first time. He brought not Microsoft's Windows operating system, but introduced the Apple II's first BASIC compiler. At that time, Gates was 24 years old, and Microsoft had just been established for more than 2 years.
In the summer of 1992, when Apple last took its products to Chicago to exhibit at CES (it returned last year, but only advertised the products), the CEO of Apple used slideshows to show the Newton computer, the purpose is to "change the personal computer." We can now think of it as a prototype of an iPhone or iPad, but it turns out to be "too early."
Since 1998, CES has gone through several twists and turns (mainly because the number of exhibitors is not uniform, everyone prefers to go to Las Vegas), and finally settled in Las Vegas, from the past irregular number to once a year.
Of course, in recent years, CES has also begun to try to go out of Las Vegas, such as the launch of CES Asia, which was held in Shanghai from 2015 to 2019. In 2020, CES Asia was officially discontinued, and the official statement was that "the focus of the organization's work in the future will be focused on CES-related activities and projects".
Now it seems that the decision to cancel CES Asia is clearly wrong, after all, China's epidemic prevention measures have done a really good job.
In 2021, due to the epidemic, CES made a history – the first time it was held online.
Even if CES 2022 is restarted this year, the outlook is still not optimistic.
Offline CES without exhibitors has no soul
As the world's largest consumer electronics show, CES is not only a stage for manufacturers to release new products, but also a platform for companies to seek media exposure, and an occasion for companies to talk about procurement and cooperation. This is also the main reason why CES has been able to attract more than 4,000 manufacturers and harvest rich exhibition income.
According to the introduction of Sina Technology, CES in previous years was once difficult to find booths, and even the smallest booth in the North Exhibition Hall needed to cost about 300,000 yuan, and it needed to be booked a full year in advance.
Online CES in 2021 attracted only 1,000 companies to participate, which is pitifully less than in previous years. In order to attract as many companies as possible to participate in the online exhibition, the participation fee for CES 2021 is only $1500. (Less than 10,000 yuan)
Even if CES in 2022 adopts an online + offline model, it does not seem to change the dilemma of the financial owners saying goodbye.
According to the official WEBSITE OF CES, in 2022 there will be "more than 2,100 companies from all over the world that will showcase the latest technologies such as digital health, food technology, and automotive technology." This is only 1/2 of 2020.
Panasonic, which usually occupies large central exhibition halls at CES, is understood to have "shifted the main activities to the virtual platform." ”
Intel, AMD, and Nvidia have chosen to release new products online.
Lenovo also announced that it would "suspend all live events in Las Vegas."
MSI has also cancelled the CES live physical exhibition in favor of online display of its new 2022 products.
In terms of participating media, due to the pursuit of Chinese media in recent years, CES has also become a large-scale "Chinese media meeting".
Because of the epidemic, the exhibition needs to be quarantined for multiple days, which means that the quarantine may not be lifted during the New Year.
Domestic security, don't run around!
In addition, there are reports that even the us local technology media have basically bid farewell to the CES offline exhibition in 2022, such as The Verge, CNET, Engadget and so on.
Fifty years later, the U.S. IT boom ignited CES, and fifty years later, the United States is helpless against the epidemic on its home territory and is slowly putting CES at a disadvantage.
What are your expectations for this year's online exhibition?
Even if we can't get to the scene, we can still learn about these products through indirect forms with the help of online launches. (This is also the crisis that CES will face in the future, obviously it can be online, why do you have to spend money to risk your life to hold exhibitions offline)
For example, in the PC field, if not surprisingly, at this year's CES 2022 exhibition, Intel will officially launch the mobile terminal products of the 12th generation Core processor, introducing many advanced features into the notebook platform, including hybrid architecture design, specifications of up to 14 cores and 20 threads, DDR5 or LPDDR5 memory, GNA 3.0 independent acceleration unit, etc. In short, with the blessing of these advanced technologies, the game book and thin and light book in 2022 will get a new round of performance leaps!
Based on the current exposures and the test data flowing out of the Geekbench 5 database, it is almost certain that Intel will release two product lines, Alder Lake-H and Alder Lake-P, during CES 2022.
In terms of Alder Lake-H, the test data of Core i9-12900HK, Core i7-12800H, Core i7-12700H, Core i7-12650H, Core i5-12500H, Core i5-12450H and other models have appeared in the Geekbench 5 database, and the specifications can also be basically confirmed.
To the thin and light book launched the Alder Lake-P series, it is expected that the Alder Lake-P series will solve the problem of up to 4 cores, the highest specification of its new products is 6 performance core + 8 energy efficiency core, the mainstream Core i5 also provides 4 performance core + 8 energy efficiency core, in the number of cores to completely make up for the shortcomings, combined with the optimization of the process process and microarchitecture, the performance is very worth looking forward to!
AMD is ready to release the Ryzen™ 6000 series mobile processor codenamed Rembrandt, which has been comprehensively improved for the platform as a whole, and the shortcomings of the previous two generations of products have been comprehensively compensated, which will allow laptops equipped with Ryzen™ processors to get a comprehensive improvement in experience.
The biggest upgrade highlight of the Rembrandt family is the new generation of Navi2 nuclear display equipped with RDNA 2 architecture, which is greatly improved compared with the Vega nuclear display that has lasted for many years; according to rumors, the Navi2 nuclear display equipped with Rembradnt can even have performance performance beyond gtX 1050 Ti. Such a graphics card is enough to play CS:GO smoothly on a thin and light book and "eat chicken" with the right picture quality!
In addition, Rembrandt will use TSMC N6 process and equipped with Zen 3+ kernel, which supports advanced features such as USB4, PCIe 4 protocol, and DDR5LPDDR5 memory.
In terms of Nvidia, last year CES updated its RTX30 series mobile graphics card, but there is a big difference in performance from the desktop side. For example, the RTX 3080 notebook GPU is equipped with only GA104 level core + GDDR6 video memory, rather than the desktop version of the RTX 3080 GA102 level core + GDDR6X video memory, there is a big gap in the number of CUDA units and the frequency of video memory.
Many players are looking forward to a higher specification and more powerful mobile flagship graphics card, and this desire is no longer a fantasy or speculation, and there is a high probability that it will be realized during CES 2022. According to foreign media reports, there is now an RTX 3080 Ti laptop GPU on the way.
On the display front, Samsung will launch its first OLED TV during CES 2022. At the same time, LG will launch a 42-inch C-series OLED TV at CES in January 2022... In addition, there are also manufacturers such as OnePlus and TCL, which will also have actions.
brief summary
In the past two years, due to the impact of the epidemic, many exhibitions have been suspended or held online, and it is not easy for CES 2022 to be held in such a difficult environment.
But it is undeniable that with the uncertainty of the epidemic and the competition for domestic exhibitions (such as BW, CJ), as well as the gradual generation of VR exhibition demand (such as Baidu's smart conference), CES, which has gone through 50 years, is facing an unprecedented test.
Or many years later, when you think of CES, you will think of those days in January 2020, the last global event of the technology industry before the epidemic. A total of 170,000 attendees from more than 160 countries around the world, including 60,000 international visitors and more than 6,500 journalists, gathered in Las Vegas.