The Product You Missed at ISE 2013

Microsoft

You may have easily missed a great new product at ISE 2013 because it was a big show. But here we are thinking about a product you missed because the company didn’t join ISE 2013. It wasn’t there.

The company missed ISE 2013-- not because it has no money and not because it had a conflict like BETT. (It did have a stand at BETT but the company didn’t bother to bring the “AV” along to BETT either.)

By now you may have guessed we are talking about Microsoft.

Last year Microsoft traded their multi-touch Surface brand to their PC division to bail out their receding position laptops. Then Microsoft bought Perceptive Pixel, the multi-touch display company best known for making the giant touchscreen used on CNN.

You might argue Microsoft still sees AV as a niche market but Microsoft says it bought PPI because “PPI’s patented technologies are used across a wide variety of industries” and …”its expertise in both software and hardware will contribute to success in broad scenarios such as collaboration, meetings and presentations.”

And, anyways, the big trend in IT is to seek out niche markets…

So why doesn’t Microsoft seek a place in a trade show where the multitouch industry hangs out?

The best guess could be this acquisition was thrown under the Microsoft Office division, a division that considers itself IT and whose PC vision of collaboration has yet to make the big screens.

We say “guess” because we asked Microsoft what trade shows the Perceptive Pixel products would be at this year. Here’s what the Microsoft spokesperson said: “Thank you for your patience as I looked into your request. I have connected with my most appropriate colleagues, and unfortunately we are unable to accommodate your request at this time. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

That’s right: 97,106 employees and no one knows which trade shows these products will be at in all of 2013? And then there’s the “Microsoft Rapid Response Team” from the PR firm who actually gets paid the big bucks for responding as quickly as possible to requests with: “We don’t know.”

The other half of Wintel, the hardware guys of Intel, visit ISE. Or at least they visit Amsterdam for the day-before ISE for the AOpen Forum Europe 2013-- a digital signage conference that they sponsor. But they too do NOT exhibit at ISE.

Despite their interest in empowering digital signage, pro AV still seems to Intel a fractured and segmented market best supported by OEMs and not directly.

Shame on both accounts.

Go Read our article Why Is Microsoft Buying Perceptive Pixel?