Gadget makers focus on cheap temptations at Consumer Electronics Show

Electronics sales rebounded in the just-ended holiday season, but the industry’s biggest event will still have the recession hanging over it. The International Consumer Electronics Show, which opens Wednesday, will be smaller than usual, with key products unveiled at prices that are far from extravagant.

Manufacturers will use the show in Las Vegas to trot out the devices they hope will keep consumers opening their wallets, despite high unemployment. TVs with 3-D displays, svelte laptops and e-book readers will be the hottest categories.

Gadget makers are in a much better mood than they were a year ago, when they were shocked by a 27 percent decline in holiday sales of electronics and appliances. In the month leading up to the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, exhibitors were canceling because they were concerned about the economy, said Jason Oxman, senior vice president at the Consumer Electronics Association, the trade association that organizes CES.

In contrast, in the just-ended shopping season, revenue from electronics sales in the U.S. between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 rose 5.9 percent from the same period of 2008, according to an estimate by MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse, which tracks all forms of payment, including cash. The analysts don’t give a dollar figure.

And this time CES exhibitors were adding themselves to the lineup in the week before the show, Oxman said.

“There’s a great deal of enthusiasm leading into 2010 that just wasn’t there in the 2009 show,” he said.

The association expects 2,500 exhibitors and 110,000 attendees, roughly flat with last year but still down considerably from 2007, when 144,000 people came.

CES, which began in 1967, was originally focused on home entertainment gear. But with the demise of large computer trade shows in the U.S., CES is now the main venue not just for audio and video giants like Panasonic Corp., but also such pillars of the computing world as Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer will kick off the show with a keynote speech Wednesday night, an annual role he took over from Chairman Bill Gates last year.

Missing from the show, as usual, will be one of the biggest trendsetters in electronics: Apple Inc., which reveals its products at its own events.

For TV makers, CES is the opportunity to demonstrate sets that will hit stores by summer, and to preview technologies that will be available next holiday season.

The manufacturers have been fortunate that the U.S. is still in what is considered a TV upgrade cycle, with households replacing their old tube sets with flat panels. That trend hasn’t even slowed in the recession. Research firm iSuppli estimates that 33.8 million flat-panel sets were shipped in the U.S. in 2009, up 17 percent from 2008.