I’m headed to CES, typing this while flying to San Francisco for some meetings then over to lost wages. Here are some interesting tidbits on costs. Airfare is for me N/A as I have an Air Canada flight pass. On Sunday, I made the call to hit CES for a couple of days (more on why in minute). I used Hotwire to see what car/hotel packages were available. I do the car thing because sometimes it’s just cheaper than the round trip cab fare and the lines/times, etc, work out.
Hotwire got me into the Venetian with a rental car for 3 nights for $339 all in. Travelocity showed the Venetian at around $170 a night so I was pleased. I wasn’t surprised at the availability but was (pleasantly) surprised at just how low the prices really were. The car gets me out of cab lines and (in this case) is cheaper than the two cab rides. I walk to the convention so no other transportation costs.
I decide to head out to CES to walk a couple of the key spots where I can get a sense of costs, trends, and what the Asian markets are up to. The first place I hit is the area between the Las Vegas Hilton and the Las Vegas Convention Center. The exhibit space between these two facilities is home to foreign (non-US) countries and the country booth.
For example, Taiwan will have a big chunk of space with a bunch of companies inside the subsidized space. It is here you can find the knock offs of whatever the big boys are showing in the main halls. Last year, somebody was showing off the 16gig min-SD card, quoting quantity pricing. Today, I have one ($60) in my BlackBerry. 16 gigs of storage on my belt. Knowing that last year was a big data point for one of our portfolio companies as well as something built into the thesis about storage/pricing on mobile devices.
The second place I go to are the big boy partner booths. Typically, Microsoft, Oracle, RIM, etc, all do this. Anybody with a platform/API story will having developers/ISVs/Partners showing off what they are doing. It’s a cheaper way of getting booth space and gives you a focused view on what’s hot/flavor of the month for MSFT, etc.
The third place I go are the theme spots (GPS or RFID or whatever) that the show’s producer creates. These are places within the larger sections of the show floor. So you’ll have at the Sands Expo center “PC stuff” but sub sections on 3-D graphics (I’m making this up as an example). The show daily points these mini areas out and typically the new/upcoming items show up here. They are more like pods/stations vs. booths but again, it’s cheaper for the company and you can get a good look at lots of new companies.
I’ll be there a couple of days and will try to report anything I see that could be on interest to you and your start up.
Comments