The yearly International Consumer Electronics Show gets under way Thursday in Las Vegas,where technology companies from Orange County and around the world will show off their latest products and do a little partying.
Many OC companies have made the trek east to CES, including Western Digital Corp., Broadcom Corp., Ingram Micro Inc. and Kingston Technology Co.
CES has emerged as a critical place for local companies to show off their wares for the increasingly important consumer market.
Consumers are driving the tech industry of late as Corporate America still is slow to upgrade computers and software.
The Arlington, Va.-based Consumer Electronics Association, which puts on CES, projects the consumer electronics market to grow by 8% to $135 billion this year. The market grew 11% in 2005.
CES is expected to host more than 2,500 exhibitors in 1.5 million square feet of space on the Strip. The event runs through Sunday.
The show has become a must for OC tech companies since the demise of the Comdex computer show a few years ago.
Speakers this year are the who’s who of technology, including Bill Gates and Larry Page, cofounder of Google Inc.
Technology companies have been using CES to unveil new products,even before the show officially starts.
Irvine-based Broadcom got some decent media coverage for unveiling the industry’s first decoder chip Tuesday that is compliant with both formats for the next generation of high-definition video discs, which have better picture quality than traditional DVDs.
Broadcom rival Conexant Systems Inc. of Newport Beach said Tuesday it was selling a serial bus technology for multimedia applications, such as watching television or listening to the radio on a personal computer.
