The chief executive of Verizon Communications has canceled his appearance for a keynote panel at the 2012 Consumer Electronics show, the telecom company said on Tuesday.

Verizon said that a schedule change is preventing CEO Lowell McAdam from attending the high-profile technology conference in Las Vegas.

Verizon Wireless spokesman Peter Thonis did not give any further information about the matter, but claimed that the company was indeed on an endeavor to send another executive in CEO MacAdam’s place at the technology conference, which kicks off next week.

Losing interest in CES?

Well, what’s up with this?  Are companies losing interest in CES?  First, Microsoft announced that they would no longer be participating after CES 2012, now Verizon’s head is backing out.

While there’s a handful of companies that seem to be making last minute changes to their CES efforts, Microsoft’s reasoning is a bit different from Verizon’s.

“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,” Microsoft Vice President Frank X. Shaw wrote in a recent blog.

Microsoft’s goals beyond CES

Microsoft has announced that its CES 2012 appearance will be its last, with no plans to hold either a keynote nor run a booth at the show in the future. “Our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing” the company said today, ending a near 20-year partnership with CES organizers CEA.

Previous CES keynotes have seen Microsoft attempt to carve a niche for itself in the consumer electronics space, for instance CEO Steve Ballmer attempting to drum up enthusiasm for Windows 7 on tablets with the HP slate back at CES 2011 in January. Windows 8 is likely to be the centerpiece of the CES 2012 keynote, as Microsoft prepares its next-gen OS to enter a battleground analysts suspect it may be far too late to.

“Are we doing something because it’s the right thing to do, or because “it’s the way we’ve always done it”?” Microsoft apparently asked itself, before deciding its time at the Consumer Electronics Show was almost at an end. ”We’ll continue to participate in CES as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries.”