By: Guy Hauser
CES 2016 has come and gone. Another year in the bag. NewsWatch was there on the ground in Las Vegas covering all that is groundbreaking and new in the tech world. While attending this massive event definitely gives you an idea of how large it is in scope, you won’t truly be able to fathom the size without a few statistics.
Sure some of you couldn’t be there with us but there were many that were. Over 170,000 to be a little more precise. That’s roughly the population of Chattanooga, Tennessee. So basically the entire city of Chattanooga attended CES this year.
There were over 2.47 million square feet of tech exhibits at the world’s biggest tech trade show. These square feet housed north of 3,800 exhibitors, there to drum up business and highlight the newest breakthroughs in their field.
Needless to say these numbers blew away any previous year’s performance. But what’s even more staggering is the fact that over 50,000 of these attendees were international. They traveled to Vegas from over 150 countries. There were even 100-plus delegations in attendance, including Cuba! (Yes that Cuba.)
Gary Shapiro, CEO of the CTA (Consumer Technology Association), which organizes and puts on the event every year, remarked on this, “CES has cemented its position as the global gathering place for all industries to be wowed by the tens of thousands of ways that technology is changing the world as we know it.”
Continuing with the numbers, over 500 startup companies represented. That’s in comparison to 375 last year.
There were a jaw-dropping 15.2 billion social media impressions regarding CES between January 5th and the 9th. #CES2016 alone appeared just under 1.3 billion times on social media. Just to put that in perspective, that’s over 200 million more mentions than the Super Bowl garnered last year during the big game.
6,000 members of the media (hey maybe that includes us!) were on site, reporting on the events.
So all in all it was a successful event with epic numbers showing up. We consider ourselves “vets” when it comes to CES and from first-hand experience we can tell you this was the biggest and boldest CES we’ve ever seen.
Let us know in the comments below if you were following along with what was happening at CES 2016 and what you were most impressed by.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Guy Hauser is a regular tech beat reporter for NewsWatch. He lives in Maryland with his wife and loves all things tech.
