Las Vegas – A scaled down Comdex/Fall opened its doors yesterday with Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina’s keynote address that hearkened back to the days when the show was fully geared toward the corporate IT market.
The show, which is taking up about half its usual space in the Las Vegas Convention Center, for the most part has dumped its consumer approach and is once again firmly on the business side of the market. This matched the spirit of Fiorina’s speech, which she used to implore the attendees to deliver business solutions and not just cool products.
“The demand for technology for its own sake is down, but the need for technology is still there,” she said.
Fiorina said the industry must look past the doom and gloom reports that have dominated its news for the past few years and to keep being innovative.
Fiorina used most of her keynote to hype HP’s place in the market as she explained how the corporation is the technological backbone behind everything from the NY Stock Exchange to Amazon.com.
Her one bone to the consumer market centered on the newly announced Tablet PC product. While most Tablet PC vendors at the show consider it a business tool – even though it is selling through retail – Fiorina spoke of it as a consumer product.