Microsoft Corp. said on Wednesday that the CES 2012 will be its last keynote presentation and booth at the Consumer Electronics Show, marking the end of an era when Microsoft kicked off the trade-show.

"We have decided that this coming January will be our last keynote presentation and booth at CES. We’ll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries, but we won’t have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing," said Frank Shaw, corporate vice president of corporate communications at Microsoft.

Instead of making a huge presence at CES, the world's largest software maker plans to unveil its new products and technologies at special events, its own conferences like Build as well as via social networks.

^{Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at CES 2011}

The widely available Internet as well as social networks and relative easiness to create ad campaigns on the web have already destroyed a number of formerly popular technology trade-shows  as big companies withdrew from taking part in them. Microsoft's decision to cease making big presence at the CES a logical one as many announcements that were made during the show were not ready for the market and the company had to cancel products it demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show.

While trade-shows no longer attract huge announcements of large companies, they have a very important thing that they cannot risk to lose: they show ongoing trends and allow journalists and end-users to touch the newest products. Unfortunately, due to cut-throat competition and half-baked devices that the companies roll-out at the shows, actual market may be completely different from what is demonstrated. 

Tags: Microsoft, Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox