Apple at Macworld Expo: “Goodbye hall. See you in the mall.”
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
By Ross Rubin, Executive Director, Industry Analysis
Citing the success of its Web site and retail stores as opportunities to market its products, Apple announced yesterday that this would be its last Macworld Expo, one of the few technology trade shows open to the public. SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller will deliver the final Macworld Expo keynote. Given the company’s proclivity to own its customer experience, the move was not surprising. For years, Steve Jobs foreshadowed the waning days of his own keynotes by talking about how many more people were coming to its stores than attending Macworld Expo.
However, it’s not simply the raw floor traffic and greater scheduling and geographic availability of Apple stores that has likely led the company to abandon its once-biannual homecoming, it’s the quality of interactions it has there. Its Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York, for example, is programmed like a cable network — an unending series of seminars and support sessions that provide opportunities to educate consumers about Apple and third-party products sold at the stores. And at both its physical stores and its Web site, Apple has a more direct path to monetization that it has within the walls of Moscone Center (even with its Market Street store just a few blocks away).
From a more strategic focus level, however, Apple is not the same Mac-centric company it was in Macworld Expo’s early days. While the Mac is still its greatest cash cow, it sells far more iPods, and its iPhone represents great growth potential — particularly among consumers who would never attend a Macworld Expo.
In the early days of such seminal Mac applications as PageMaker, QuarkXPress and Photoshop, and peripheral makers such as SuperMac, Radius, Farallon, Asante, and APS, and in the brief interlude during which there were Mac clones, there was so much happening in the Mac market that Apple was simply in the center ring of the circus. However, for the past decade, the attention around Macworld Expo has been focused squarely on Apple’s announcements.
Years ago, I attended one of the last Boston-based Macworld Expos after Apple had pulled out, and it had all the energy of the 8:30 AM statistics class I took sophomore year. Even with more tech companies in the Bay Area than in Boston, the days may soon end when those who follow both Apple and the rest of the consumer technology industry angle to work in a quick trip to San Francisco around time in Las Vegas.
Consumer Technology, Wireless | Ross Rubin, Executive Director, Industry Analysis | 
December 17, 2008 1:07 pm
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