CES 2013 Minus Microsoft: No More Tomorrow-land (readwriteweb)
There’s a good possibility that Microsoft may have made a bigger splash by
exiting the keynote address and booth presence at the 2013 Consumer
Electronics Show than it made by being there in the four years leading up to
2012. If CES were an accurate barometer of consumer sentiment, then today we
would all be snug in our vibrating chairs with our femtocell-enhanced home
wireless phones (with built-in universal remotes), watching HD DVD movies with
“TV Everywhere” live interactive background feeds on our plasma screens
through our VIIV media PCs, and with mobile TVs in our shirt pockets feeding
us live sports scores via AOL’s colossal media empire.
In 2006, the spotlight of the Bill Gates Microsoft keynote was the music
distribution service of the future. Called “Urge,” it was a joint venture
between Microsoft and MTV, at a time when the “M” in the latter’s name stood
for “music.” Users would pay $9.95 per month to stream music videos directly
to Windows Media Player 11, and receive songs in a format that was not
portable to devices like iPods. That was followed up by the phone service of
the future, called “Windows Live Call,” …
