Apple today unexpectedly announced that this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, scheduled for January 5-9, 2009, in San Francisco, will be the company’s last. For the first time since 1997, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will not be giving a keynote presentation to open the show; instead, Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening address.
In the release announcing the change, the company states: “Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.
Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.”
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