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Tokyo Macworld Canceled
jlechem writes "Wired is running a story about Apple pulling out of Macworld Tokyo. It seems they decided to pull out quietly several months ago. And once they left all the major Apple Developers followed, and IDG canceled the show due to 'lack of exhibitor interest.' Macworld Tokyo is the biggest gathering of Mac fans in the world. Although the three-day show draws about half the exhibitors of U.S. shows, it attracts double the number of visitors, about 190,000. Traditionally held in March, the Tokyo show has run for the last 12 years. After their threat to ditch Macworld Boston, you have to wonder why Apple is pulling out of these expos?"
My experience from them with past MacWorld expos in the USA is that they are not nearly as willing to negotiate as they should be. These folks had a serious cash cow in the marketing money they took by the truckload from dotcoms who had to be have the biggest most amazing booths at their tradeshow. I'm glad to see some of the heavy weights in the industry, such as recent Apple pull-outs and Adobe's non-show in NY last year, finally put these people in their place. Time for some new blood in the promotional events arena methinks. Chin up. This only means good things for smaller software development houses, what the dotcom era was _supposed_ to be about.
Apple has not given its employees a pay raise in 2 years. They just laid off a few people.
They are cutting all unnecessary costs.
The internet is taking away from the importance of expo's, as are the Apple Stores.
During the current OS X transition, Apple needs the G4 architecture to support legacy software. Not just in Classic. Many users still boot OS 9.
Once OS X is fully adopted, Apple could release hardware based on another architecture with no Classic support. App vendors would need to recompile Carbon/Cocoa apps into "fat" binaries.
But who knows...if Intel continues to push Pentium performance, maybe a G4 emulator could smooth the transition, like the 68K emulator that shipped with the first PPC macs.
Exactly.
To add to this, Macworld are expensive to Apple. The booths, the personnel, their lodging, the equipment--Apple would rather shave some costs and attend only one Macworld--the one in San Francisco, where its closer to the corporate office and spends less to attend.
New York is a big expense as well, but with an Apple Store in place (and the largest of them all), having a Macworld there would generate business and home sales, cushioning the expense blow of attending Macworld there. That's probably why Apple became angry at returning to a smaller venue such as Boston.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Apple is as active as ever with the events that count, events that my company helps manage. They sponsor many of the O'Reilly events, as well as (for example) the recent Macromedia DevCon in Orlando.
Apple's quite generous with the hardware at these events, rivalling the amount of equipment found in the largest tradeshow booths.
This, and the fact that Comdex is on the skids (how's CeBit doing?), really just points to the fact that vendors everywhere, Apple included, are realizing that the best way to reach real customers is through smaller, targeted, developer-oriented events.
As someone who has been a marketing droid, tradeshows are not an effective use of marketing money when you brand is well established - it doesn't tend to generate new leads or customers because most of the people that go are already existing (in Apple's case, also loyal) customers. A marketing investment *should* translate into sales, immediate or repeat (this is the post .com era, right?).
There can be post-sales value in a "user group" sense but there are often better ways to sustain customer loyalty, particularly for commodity products, which PCs including Macs have become.
JGski
Um, I'm the proud owner of a 1999 G3 Blue+White, I have no idea what you mean by upgradability here. I've got 1GB RAM in it, 14 slots left on the SCSI chain and 2 on the IDE chain, and several 64-bit PCI slots free. This is a lot more expandability than a typical PC from that day. Apple has two offerings for hardware, one is unexpandable consumer-oriented and the other is workstation-class hardware for serious users. Yes, there is less hardware available for the Mac, but what is available is of much higher quality than typical PC-consumer offerings, and it just works when you plug it in.
And a poorly attended/cancelled expo isn't BAD for the economy, it's just not AS GOOD as a burgenoning expo. That's like saying not getting a bonus for christmas is BAD for your wallet, it's not bad, it's just not good.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
In some article involving a ranking member of IDG, a conference call/phone conversation with Steve Jobs is quoted or paraphrased saying that he didn't know if he could make enough new product announcements twice a year to warrant two major US expos. Sounds reasonable enough.
Another reason why the expos are a hassle for Apple is people read all the rumor sites and expect ridiculous products (I've been waiting for a 2Ghz G5 for some time now.) to be released. When they aren't released, customers get pissed and blame Apple. It's a joke. One rumor site (I don't want to give them advertising.) once posted an article about a possible join effort between Apple and Lucent to produce a wireless product. The source? A Lucent commercial that shows people using Mac's. It's no wonder Apple lets their lawyers loose on these guys.
Now if only Mr. Google would help me find that darn article...
maybe mac has decided that more switchers ads and less macworlds is the right path for the times.
anyway, now IDG can get onto planning WinWorld, if only they could figure a way to make the escalators crash and the elevators freeze . . . . .. .
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Heck, Customers had Apple's hardware announcement strategy figured out back in '94. I worked for an Apple Specialist and our sales always slowed the 2-3 weeks before a MacWorld show. Also, Steve has been weening the Apple users off of expecting MacWorld announcements since he re-took Apple.
I think the real issue at Apple is the emmense cost of going to these shows. In this economy I am sure that Apple is looking for any way to cut costs. I would rather Apple put the money into R&D and marketing than a Mac only trade show. Going to MacWorld is preaching to the choir. They need to be enticing new people over to the platform.