Apple again dominates CES without even showing up
It's not true that Apple has always shunned the Consumer Electronics Show, but in 2025 it is yet again the most dominant company at the event, despite not being there.
Apple and CES 2025 logos -- image credit: Apple and CES
Apple's disregard of CES is so well known that it was headline news in 2020 when it was claimed that the company was attending it again. But Apple didn't exhibit anything, didn't launch anything, and it didn't have a stand.
It was only there to take a stance instead.
In that 2020 CES, Apple's then senior director of global privacy, took part in a panel on the subject. Jane Horvath said everything you would expect Apple's privacy chief to say, and then the panel was over.
So with no offense to Horvath or CES, this was not Apple really attending the show in 2020. It was the firm's head of privacy doing the rounds of talks and panels on her subject.
Apple did exhibit at CES
You actually have to go back to the early '90s to find when Apple bothered to show up to CES properly. John Sculley unveiled the Newton MessagePad at the May 1992 version in Chicago. We all know how that ended up.
It didn't seem so at the time, it instead seemed like Apple making a hugely successful announcement. But Sculley announced it far, far too early.
This is actually key to why Apple will not attend CES -- and why it ceased attending Macworld Expo after 2009. That's also why Macworld Expo died, after limping on for five further years.
From Apple's perspective, it no longer wanted to be tied to another firm's or another event's timetable for its announcements.
There would be no repeats of the Newton announcement and no launches, until Apple was ready -- or that was the theory. In practice, Apple made an early announcement of its AirPower charging device in 2017, and but ultimately cancelled the whole project.
Other than that peculiar misstep and the odd early sneak peek at devices such as the iMac Pro, Apple has been working to its own schedule.
It helps that over time, and certainly by the end of the 2010s, Apple was also big enough that it simply didn't need other firms' events.
Overshadowing CES
But if it's decades since Apple exhibited at CES, there has not been a single show in recent years that was not replete with products related to Apple. Or, filled with products that were competing with Apple, sometimes quite desperately.
Even as recently as CES 2024, there were VR and AR headsets aplenty, and nobody cared because the Apple Vision Pro was coming.
That said, headsets had failed to get many people caring even when there was no sign of Apple entering the market. There's a bit of an argument that people still aren't fussed about headsets.
A similar thing is going on with CES 2025 and the Circular Ring. It's a smart ring that now includes health features such as an ECG, but hanging over it is the specter of an Apple Smart Ring.
There isn't even an Apple Smart Ring, Apple has not announced one -- although it has filed for many patents on the idea. But still, there's a sense of a company trying to get a foothold in the market before Apple takes it over.
If you can't beat them, accessorize them
More directly and immediately tying their business to Apple, is the slew of companies producing accessories for the iPhone and other devices. Eli Health has released a hormone testing kit for the iPhone, for instance, while Hyper and Targus have launched a slew of cases, hubs, and backpacks.
Many of those, especially the backpacks, could of course be used to carry any company's devices. But the HyperPack case comes complete with an integrated tracker that works with Apple's Find My.
Then other firms, such as Moft, have now launched stands for the iPhone -- and which also work with Find My.
And even when there doesn't seem to be an Apple connection, there is. SwitchBot is using CES 2025 to launch its new K20+ Pro robot vacuum cleaner -- and it integrates with Siri.
So do the new Lutron Caseta window shades. Withings' new Omnia smart mirror may use its own sensors, but it comes with an iPhone app that integrates with Apple's Health one.
If Apple builds it, they will come
By now in 2025, with over two billion iPhones active in the world, and the company exceeding $3 trillion in value, the sheer volume of Apple devices is able to distort CES. If Apple supports a certain technology standard in its devices, that standard is suddenly vastly more attractive to other firms.
This year that's perhaps most visible with Thunderbolt 5. That connectivity standard was co-developed by Intel and a host of partners including Apple, but it's needed Apple to make it mainstream.
Apple's newest MacBook Pro models and the M4 Pro Mac mini support Thunderbolt 5 and its ability to provide up to 240W power, and up to 120Gb/s data transfer speeds. Thunderbolt 5 existed before these Macs, but CES 2025 is showing off new compatible docks from the likes of Targus and Ugreen.
Apple and CES
CES needs Apple and the organizing body knows it. Apple's massive user base means a massive list of companies looking to fulfill needs and perhaps to ride on the coattails of the iPhone manufacturer.
There's a strong argument that if Apple needed CES, it would show up. But each firm that tries to tack on to Apple's devices with its own accessories, is also bolstering the market for Apple's products.
And then firms that are trying to sell VR headsets or smart rings are always compared to Apple, or they're claiming with wishful thinking that Apple will never be a competitor. So even they, with no connection to any Apple device, are constantly giving Apple free publicity.
Perhaps this will change some day, and perhaps Apple will decide it needs to exhibit at CES. But for now, Apple is so big that it casts a shadow over the entire Consumer Electronics Show without even trying.
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Comments
And in the old day… MacWorld Expo was held in the second week.
Except one year! 2007.
That year… CES and MacWorld Expo were held in the same first week of January.
But there was a tiny detail: At 10:00am on Monday… Steve Jobs demonstrated the iPhone!
Almost no other news… even everything at CES… received so much attention.
But I understand why they do things they way they do them now. They can reach a much larger audience just doing everything online.
The world has changed and Steve predicted it.
Today the smartphone is the primary computing modality for Joe Consumer. When the iPhone was unveiled, Steve referred to it as "the computer for the rest of us." He was correct.
In the past ten years, the smartphone has been the primary driver of almost all consumer electronics innovation. Not just hardware but also software and services.
The personal computer -- while still important -- no longer is where the innovation is happening.
Remember that Apple dominated Macworld Expo up until its departure. Today's Apple gets what it wants holding its own media events, not sharing the limelight with anyone. Operating at their own schedule (not forced to show up annually at a tradeshow whose date is pretty much set in stone) and in their venue of choice.
Remember that both Winter CES and Macworld Expo open the new year, which puts a strain on staff who want to take time off during the holidays (Christmas, New Years). It also butts up with issues concerning manufacturing since China takes about two weeks off for the Lunar New Year holiday.
Apple gets more bang for its buck just by editing videos now and holding small meet-and-greet demo sessions after the launch announcements. All the attention is on them. They have full control over time, venue, and messaging.
Tech tradeshows are really just dinosaurs. Their fate was pretty obvious when COMDEX shut down after 2003. There are still justifications for holding developer conferences but these big tradeshows are pretty anachronistic. Even videogame focused E3 (a descendant of Summer CES) is dead. Unsurprisingly Nintendo is often a no-show at gaming shows.
Tech tradeshows made more sense in an era when the typical journalist didn't know what a PDF spec sheet was and the few who did still needed to fly home, go to the office and fire up their desktop PC to download that document (and probably print it out). So most people just carried 5 pounds of deadtrees marketing collateral on the flight home.