APPLE Inc. won’t be placing a giant booth at the big CES tech trade show starting Sunday in Las Vegas, but its recent sales warning — and the country it blamed for the shortfall — will undoubtedly be the talk of the show.

Typically, Apple casts a shadow over CES due to anticipation for the iPhone maker’s next product, competitors racing to beat them to the market and hundreds of accessory makers looking to make a buck on the iPhone maker’s platform. This year, Apple’s reduced revenue forecast and whether the flagging Chinese economy will hamper other big electronics companies will vie for attendees’ attention.

The consumer electronics trade show is partly known for being divorced from the real world. It’s a place where companies show off early prototypes that may never turn into commercial products. While some attend CES to see game-changing advances like the original Xbox in 2001, the Palm Pre phone in 2009, and 3-D and 4K TVs in more recent years, the real noise is made in backroom meetings among major companies and suppliers of the potentially next big thing.

Many key suppliers are based in China and may have a harder time securing deals this year, as trade tensions flare and companies in the United States seek to avoid tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.

“The health of the Chinese economy and the U.S. economy is an overhang for the show,” said Gary Shapiro, the president and chief executive officer of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which produces the annual trade show. Still, he said, “there will be discussions with Chinese companies on the buyer-and-seller relationship behind closed doors.” Some of the CTA’s members with business in China have already adjusted and moved manufacturing and sourcing out of the country, Shapiro added.

The CTA has organized a panel dedicated to tariffs and the show floor will have a booth for U.S. attendees to contact the U.S. Trade Representative and the White House and explain how tariffs have affected their businesses.

Apple on Wednesday cut its revenue outlook for the first time in almost two decades, citing weaker demand in China because of the country’s slowing economy and rising trade tensions with the United States.

A big question is how much of Apple’s problems can be blamed on China’s economy versus Chinese consumers’ preference for homegrown brands. The falloff in demand for iPhones is at least partly explained by its high price and the rise of cheaper, more comparable rival devices in the world’s largest market. The iPhone XS Max, the current top of the iPhone range, starts at 9,599 yuan (US$1,400) in China. Flagship phones from Huawei Technologies Co. and Oppo cost from 4,000 to 5,000 yuan, around half that of an iPhone.

Huawei supplanted Apple as the world’s No. 2 smartphone brand in 2018. (SD-Agencies)