Gary Shapiro, president/CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association announced overnight that the 2015 International CES reached a record 176,676 industry professionals, with 48,833 coming from outside of the U.S. Over 3,500 Australians travelled to last year’s show.
Several major vendors are now considering whether they will attend the 2016 show. Paul Read the CEO of Panasonic Australia told ChannelNews that his Company is now placing a “bigger emphasis” on the IFA Show in Europe in September. “We believe that IFA is better suited for us, it has more appliances and CES is getting very large”.
The 2016 CES show will be my 20th show and what has emerged during the past four years is the expansion of categories which is now creating difficulty when covering the event. What was primarily a consumer electronics show is now becoming an automotive and sound show. There is also halls for dromes and robots as well as wearables. More than 6,000 media attend the event.
The CEA said that exhibitors topped 3,600 for the first time, filling more than 2.23 million net square feet of exhibit space.
A record 6,952 media members and industry analysts attended, generating 703,602 mentions of #CES2015 during the show, with 7.51 billion total potential Twitter impressions.
More than 153 countries were represented at the show.
CEA officials now claim that they are concerned with capacity issues, will enact enhanced credentialing procedures and tighter qualification criteria for the 2016 International CES to cap attendance at 176,000.
“With the growth of the consumer technology industry and the parallel growth of the International CES comes an increase in the qualified registrant base for our show. While these individuals are qualified industry professionals, we are reaching space capacity and simply can’t accommodate every qualified individual to our show,” said Karen Chupka, CEA senior VP, International CES and corporate business strategy.
“Enhanced credentialing procedures will enable us to ensure that qualified attendees can participate in our show and conduct business while providing a high-quality experience for all. These efforts also will allow us to improve some of the logistical and operational challenges that come with producing and attending such a large event.”
New registrants or previous registrants who did not attend the 2014 or 2015 CES will be subject to new enhanced credentialing and tighter qualification criteria.
This means that although individuals may have qualified for registration in previous years, they must resubmit credentials to qualify for the 2016 CES.
To qualify, all registrants must provide a brief description of their industry affiliation along with links to their company website with an employee roster, a description of the business engagement at CES or a link to a current publication or article the registrant authored or in which they were quoted or cited as an industry professional.
Alternately, registrants may also provide a business card, health insurance card or other proof of employment verification.
In addition, in order to expedite affiliated registrants through the verification process, CES will ask registrants to include a business email address.
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