Tech Companies At Trade Shows

 

An interesting article that gleans the fact most of the companies at the CES Show don't have hundreds of thousands or millions even to invest in the show. So, those must yell the loudest to be heard among the cluttered landscape, as well as, make the best booth possible within their smaller budgets and hope they get seen by those that will make a difference! In the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, technology giants such as Texas Instruments Inc. are assembling massive exhibitions measuring thousands of square feet, with dozens of products on display.

About a mile away at the Sands Expo and Convention Center, small companies such as Data Drive Thru Inc. and Bamboo Technology LLC will compete for attention in much tinier spaces, hoping flashy signs, product demos or leggy models will attract visitors. Most of the 2,700 exhibitors at the International Consumer Electronics Show, the biggest trade show in the world, fall somewhere between those two extremes. Whether they're industry titans or start-ups introducing their first product, they're all vying to be heard above the din. "Everybody tries to shout the loudest so that you get the attention that you want," said Janet Allen, who's been planning Nokia Oyj's CES exhibition. The 40th-anniversary show will feature big companies, such as TI and Nokia, who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars showing off their wares on the Las Vegas Convention Center's trade show floor, renting space where they can build enormous structures with meeting rooms, stages and displays for gadgets.

Meanwhile, tiny companies are shelling out thousands of dollars for smaller pieces of real estate, trying to impress potential distributors and customers with slick logos and cool product demos. The Consumer Electronics Association, which organizes CES, expects about 140,000 attendees from 130 countries at this year's event. That includes exhibitors, sales and marketing professionals, executives, industry analysts and international news media. Companies find the show particularly fruitful for meeting with overseas partners. "Typically for me, flying to Japan, I can meet a couple customers a day for the two or three days I'm there," said Greg Delagi, TI's vice president for digital signal processing systems. "At CES, I can have meetings from sunup till long past sundown." Most executives have their schedules booked long before their planes land in Las Vegas. Since almost everyone in the industry is in the same place for a week, those BlackBerry and Treo calendars fill up quickly. "I tried to hide my schedule from the sales VP this year to have one day to roam the floor," said Greg Zancewicz, director of broadband marketing at Plano, Texas, chip maker Microtune Inc. Some companies assign employees to scope out the competition and to look for potential partners.

Rarely does a spontaneous discovery at a booth turn into a major business deal or a shift in strategy. But it does happen. Last year, scouts from phone maker Uniden America Corp. found exhibitors promoting Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications, a technology that allows cordless phones to operate on an interference-free frequency. Uniden was familiar with DECT but until then had not detected much consumer interest in the technology. At this year's show, Fort Worth, Texas-based Uniden will be introducing its first line of DECT phones. "We were able to change our strategy," said Rich Tosi, the company's chief executive. "We basically did not decide to get into the DECT business with the models we're introducing this year until last year's CES." Chip maker WiQuest Communications Inc. of Allen, Texas, for instance, will set up shop in the WiMedia UWB TechZone, a group of booths dedicated to a type of wireless data technology. Data Drive Thru and Bamboo Technologies picked the Sands Expo center, a bus ride away from the main show floor, because the space is known for hosting cutting-edge products, executives from each company said. "We kind of consider CES our coming-out party, our grand debut," said Clint Hughes, Data Drive Thru's vice president of marketing and development. While smaller companies have only one or two products to tout, larger companies often build a theme around a few key gadgets. Nokia, the Finnish phone maker with its U.S. headquarters in Irving, Texas, has a 3,600-square-foot space inside the convention center and a 4,900-square-foot installation outside. The company will emphasize the experience its wireless products can offer in different environments, such as at home or in a park, Allen said. "My goal is that, when a guest comes to our booth, that when they walk away they just are wowed," she said. --- INTERNATIONAL CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW A really big show What:

The tech industry's annual gathering to unveil new gadgets and set the agenda for the year, with keynote speeches from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Dell Chairman Michael Dell and other big-name executives Who: 140,000 people and 2,700 exhibiting companies When: Monday through Jan. 11 (Gates' opening keynote is Sunday evening.) Where: Las Vegas SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research --- (c) 2007, The Dallas Morning News. Visit The Dallas Morning News on the World Wide Web at www.dallasnews.com Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. ----- Tech firms strive to shine, be seen at world's largest trade show

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