Apple at Macworld Expo: “Goodbye hall. See you in the mall.”

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).

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