Microsoft is bailing out of the world's biggest consumer electronics trade show. In a post on Microsoft's official blog site, the company announced that it will no longer participate directly with the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas after CES 2012, which will be held in early January.

In its post, Microsoft's corporate vice-president Frank X. Shaw stated that the company was reevaluating when Microsoft will be making major product and service announcements. He states:

After thinking about questions like these, 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. As we look at all of the new ways we tell our consumer stories – from product momentum disclosures, to exciting events like our Big Windows Phone, to a range of consumer connection points like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft.com and our retail stores – it feels like the right time to make this transition.

Microsoft's keynote speeches, first handled by Chairman Bill Gates and later by CEO Steve Ballmer, have been a mainstay of CES in previous years.

Microsoft isn't the only major company that is cutting back on its CES commitments. AllThingsD.com reported earlier this month that Dell won't have as big of a presence at CES 2012 as it has in the past few years when it took over a whole floor of the The Palms Casino Resort. Instead, it will be holding meetings in hotel suites and conference rooms.