Shoring a market that’s rebounding from a recession-induced holiday slump, Microsoft Corp. today announced that it’s offering keynote speakers at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show.

 

The software giant says that Steve Ballmer (News - Alert), chief executive officer of Microsoft, and Robbie Bach, president of the company’s Entertainment & Devices Division, will deliver a pre-show address at the event, to be held Jan. 8 to 11 in Las Vegas.

 

“Admission to the keynote address will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis to accredited members of the media and analysts with their official CES (News - Alert) badges and badge holders,” company officials say.

 

The keynote address also will be webcast live and on demand here, according to Microsoft (News - Alert).

 

Consumer electronics is an IT segment that’s looking to rebound.

 

If the chip-making market is any indication of those electronics, that comeback may be a ways off.

 

As TMCnet reported, global chip revenues are expected to decline in consecutive years, with a 16.3 percent drop forecast for 2009, according to Stamford, Connecticut-based IT market research firm Gartner, Inc.

 

The total revenue predicted – about $219 billion – is far below the firm’s earlier estimates for this year of about $262 billion, which itself marks a 4.4 percent drop from 2007. In a negative scenario, Gartner (News - Alert) (News - Alert) says, the semiconductor industry could decline as much as 24.7 percent.

 

According to Bryan Lewis, research vice president at Gartner, while many executives may try to compare this downturn to the 2001 tech bubble, this downturn is different in many ways.

 

“This downturn is broad-based, not limited to only technology, has a much different growth profile before the downturn, and has far less inventory buildup,” Lewis said. “Inventory levels this time have been monitored and more tightly controlled throughout the entire food chain, and this will help the market come back more quickly than in 2001.”

 

The firm’s prediction – made in its $195 report, titled “Dataquest Alert: Semiconductor Revenue Plummets in 4Q08, Gartner Reduces 2009 Growth to 16%” – marks a turnaround from recent calls for a moderate slowdown in the semiconductor market.

 

More than a month ago, Gartner predicted this year’s chip revenues to grow .2 percent and for a 2.2 percent decline next year. But the deepening financial crisis is having what the firm calls “an unprecedented negative impact” on this quarter’s sales. The firm is calling for a record quarter-on-quarter decline of 24.4 percent.

 

The news is disheartening but not altogether surprising: As TMCnet reported, the world’s largest computer chip-maker last month said it’s expecting to see at least $1 billion less in revenues for this quarter than first projected.

 

Officials at Santa Clara, California-based Intel Corporation said they’re expecting $9 billion in revenues for the fourth quarter – far less than a projected range of $10.1 billion to $10.9 billion. Profit margins are down more than 50 percent, the company says.

 

Meanwhile, rumor has it that Microsoft itself may be facing layoffs.

 

Officials at Fudzilla cited unnamed staff members when reporting this week that the software giant will lay off about 15,000 workers – nearly 17 percent of its workforce – on Jan. 15. That’s a week before Microsoft plans to announce its quarterly earnings.

 

The Fudzilla writer on the story, Lars-Göran Nilsson, is reporting today that “some division” of Microsoft has cut expected sales for 2009 by a whopping 90 percent.

 

“This in turn means that there’s less work for the supporting departments and as such Microsoft has a lot of redundant staff,” Nilsson writes.

 

Yet Nilsson also appears to be backing off of some of his earlier claims.

 

“It’s all going to be a matter of semantics, as although Microsoft might not announce the exact figure, there will be major cuts in a lot of departments, or at least changes which will lead to people having to leave Microsoft one way or another, it might just be a bit more subtle than issuing redundancies to 15,000 people all at once,” he writes. “We’re sure that Microsoft will get its PR department to work on a nice spin on this story comes next week, so hopefully we’ll be able to offer a company statement by then.”

 

When reached by TMCnet, a Microsoft spokesperson said the company does not comment on rumors.