Big names flee Consumer Electronics Show as Omicron variant bites

The Consumer Electronics Show, where some 100,000 industry and media folk mingle as they coo over next year's gadgets, is still scheduled for early January 2022. But many big names have pulled out and the shelves are beginning to look threadbare.

The latest to withdraw are chip maker AMD and PC manufacturer MSI. Amazon, Facebook, Google, Intel and Microsoft have already said they will not attend in-person. Organisers had hoped January's event – one of the industry's most important showcases of new consumer gadgets – could return to close to normal. In January 2021 the Las Vegas show was held as a virtual event, after the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which runs it, said it was "not possible to safely convene tens of thousands of people". … "CES will and must go on," Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive of the CTA, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.