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Starting tomorrow, a little bit of Las Vegas comes to Dubai.
The Consumer Electronics Association or CEA, the same group responsible for the Consumer Electronic Show held every January in Vegas, will be opening CES Hometech at the Dubai Convention Centre.
Odds are, you won't be going. Not because you've never heard of CES, but because the show isn't open to the public.
This is a good thing.
Odds are, you won't agree. Dubai has gotten very attached to the atmos-phere of Gitex, which attracts people from all over the region who come and see what's new in the world of IT. This is a bad thing.
Now, I know you really don't agree with that, but it's a huge problem. While no one ever wants to say this officially, Gitex has moved away from its original focus of being an IT-based trade show into the limelight as an "event." This hasn't helped the quality of the show.
While technophiles such as myself get to walk around and see all the cool new gadgets, the companies who invest tens of thousands of dirhams into the show have been complaining that they have been seeing diminishing returns on their investment. In plain terms, the customers they are hoping will show up and 'do business' have been slowly replaced by people who have no intention of buying anything. A couple of regional businesses have said the show is just no longer worth the money.
I experienced their pain last year, and I was trying to make it through the halls to an interview, which was blocked by a row of mothers slowly pushing prams down the aisles.
Odds are, they weren't looking for routers.
Hometech could actually help solve this problem. While Gitex won't be happy should consumer electronics vendors decide to part for Hometech, and some inevitably will, it will allow Gitex to focus on its strength - IT.
With all the "cool" gadgets gone, the hosts of tourists will probably go with them. Gitex won't be happy about that either, since lower traffic never looks good, but the people who will remain will be businessmen. Odds are, Gitex vendors should be very happy about that.
And there will still be the Gitex Shopper, the off-site battle royale where you can find all the latest gadgets under one roof. Shopper has more of what techno-philes are looking for anyway.
But given the success of Shopper, is it any wonder that the advisory panel for CES Hometech, which included such retail giants as Al Futtaim, is pushing for the event to be open for one and all?
It would be a mistake. If Hometech even begins to resemble its older brother in Vegas - and no is expecting that it will for a sometime - there will be enough people at the event. It Hometech wants to host an off-site event like Shopper, fine, but the last thing the show needs is having potential vendors and customers scared off by a pack of pram-pushing sightseers.
Odds are, that won't be good for anybody.
While technophiles such as myself get to walk around and see all the cool new gadgets, the companies who invest tens of thousands of dirhams into the show have been complaining that they have been seeing diminishing returns on their investment.
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