Is Vista No Longer a Factor?

January 7, 2007, 4:21 PM by Scott M. Fulton, III

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: For the ninth time, Bill Gates keynotes the International Consumer Electronics Show at 6:30 pm Pacific Time (9:30 pm on the East Coast). But of all the many hot topics casting a warm wind over this annual desert party, the name "Microsoft" doesn't seem to be as attached to them as it used to be.

Bill Gates' keynote before the PDF 2005 conference in Los Angeles.

There could be several possible factors contributing to a downplay of Microsoft this year: a) Microsoft's possibly diminishing influence in the industry; b) the reduced pertinence of desktop computers (not so much laptop) on the electronics industry at large; c) the Vista delay from last year, which may have killed most of the buzz; d) everyday consumers not really finding operating systems all that interesting any more.

Sharon Fisher, our senior CES analyst, has covered Microsoft for the past two decades, especially during her time at Gartner, at InfoWorld during the 1980s, and CommunicationsWeek during the 1990s. Sharon, is this only a trend us old-timers would notice because we've been focused on Microsoft for too long ourselves?

Sharon Fisher, BetaNews Senior CES Analyst: There's a number of reasons why there's not a lot of buzz about Vista at CES. First of all, it's hardly new; Microsoft has been talking about the operating system as "Vista" for more than a year, and as "the next version of Windows" for even longer. Plus, with all the delays it's been suffering, and will probably continue to suffer, it's hard for people to get excited about it.

And frankly, it's not like a lot of people are going to have a choice about going to Vista. You don't have the competitive aspect like you do between Xbox and Playstation 3, or Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. It's more like that classic line from The Who: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Another aspect is that CES has always been about the toys. It's a gadget show, not a software show. One of the rumors now is that Bill Gates is going to announce a new version of the Xbox 360 with the same HDMI interface that the Sony Playstation 3 has, and with 120 GB compared to the Xbox 360's 60 GB, and that's getting a lot more traction than any news about Vista, because of all these factors: a) it's new, b) there's a competition involved, and c) it's hardware.

It's also interesting to compare the buzz on Bill Gates at CES to that of Steve Jobs at Macworld, whose keynote takes place on Tuesday. They're very similar in a number of ways: In both cases, you have a head of the company who's very strongly, charismatically identified with that company, they've both been there for years, and in each case this may be their last appearance in these venues – Bill because he's removing himself from the day to day operations of his company, and Steve because he's dealing with the options issue as well as rumors about his health.

Steve's getting a lot more attention paid to his speech; everyone's talking about iPhones, iTVs, and so on. It's interesting that Macworld overlaps with CES this year, and it kind of symbolizes the dichotomy the industry keeps having between Apple and 'everyone else.' And Apple's going to have a presence at CES even though they're not there. I've talked to people who said they feel sorry for the Tuesday keynoter at CES (who, incidentally, is Michael Dell) because everyone's going to be paying attention to Steve.

Scott Fulton: Sharon, like you said, for years, CES has been more of a gadget show than a software show, and yet Bill Gates has so often been the man up front with the keynote, even during those years when you know pretty much what he's going to say ahead of time. It's as though he's comfortable, reliable, like a pair of slippers. When the Gates Keynote era ends, as it looks like it might this year, and there's no one reliably plain up there to take the helm, will it change the flavor of CES substantially, or will it just change the way journalists who often leave the show on Monday anyway look at CES?

Sharon Fisher: Well, it symbolizes the way the computer industry itself is changing. There's no longer going to be one monolithic person, or company, who has so much of a major role. And the charisma factor, the 'star' factor, is definitely going to be lost a little -- no matter how popular the Wii or the Playstation 3 are, I don't think you're going to see the chairman of Nintendo or Sony up there because those guys aren't so closely identified with the technologies of their companies.

Who knows -- maybe next year it'll be Steve Jobs.

Scott Fulton: Sharon, thanks so much.