Comdex Convention Open in Las Vegas:
Sunday November 12 7:50 PM ET
Comdex Convention Open in Las Vegas
By BRUCE MEYERSON, AP Business Writer
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Even with the recent battering of technology stocks as background noise, the marketing blare of digital-this and wireless-that promises to be louder than ever at this year's annual Computer Dealer Expo.
Bill Gates is still the headliner for opening night on the Strip, Intel Corp. will be showcasing its latest Pentium chip and the 200,000 or so people expected to attend will find themselves bombarded with themes that sound strikingly similar from last year: more Web content delivered to more places and on more kinds of devices, all with improvements in speed, wireless technology, voice recognition, privacy and security.
Comdex was scheduled to begin Sunday with a keynote address by Microsoft Corp. founder Gates.
The big change at this year's show actually may be the unrelenting shakeout on Wall Street that has ruptured confidence at every level of the Internet boom.
``The way it works at Comdex is that you see a lot of great ideas about what will be hot 12 months from now, but I'm not hearing much this year,'' said Michael Paxton, an industry analyst for Cahners In-Stat Group. ``I would imagine a lot of technology companies in general have taken hits in the market, so they'll be trying to focus more on what they can do, what products they can distribute in the near-term rather than long-term types of things.''
That means demonstrations of the latest in interactive television and digital media, including set-top boxes, cameras, and audio and video players. There's also sure to be plenty of talk about Palm and PocketPC handheld computers, as well as all the new ``Internet appliances,'' stripped-down machines from the likes of Compaq Computer Corp. and 3Com Corp. designed to provide simple Web access in any room of the house.
Either way, new products will be splattered across more than 1 million square feet of exhibit space for the first time, complimented as always by ``exclusive'' parties to drive the point home every night.
Curiously, one of the hottest tickets in town is a get-together being sponsored Monday night by a mere chip maker, a small company named Transmeta Corp. whose ``Crusoe'' processor is designed to run mobile computers without the same battery drain as rival chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.
Somehow, at a time when even established technology players have canceled plans to raise money on Wall Street, Transmeta managed to sell millions of dollars worth of stock through an initial public offering that harkened back to the days of easy money just a year ago.
And while the young company was dealt a setback recently when IBM Corp. decided not to join Sony as an early Crusoe customer, Transmeta finds itself refusing would-be guests to Monday's party.
``There's been quite a bit of demand to get access to their people, a lot of confusion in the industry to see if these chips work as advertised,'' said Paxton. ``At Comdex, most of these people are begging you to come and talk with them. But they've had such a huge response they had to cut it off.'' |
