The following is a response regarding Macworld 2010 by Adam Engst, Publisher of TidBits.
“With all due respect to alpha dog Don Mayer, I think he came away with an overly negative impression of Macworld Expo based on his brief visit. Yes, there were fewer exhibitors than last year, and yes, there were fewer attendees as well. But don’t take that to mean that Macworld was a ghost town, because nothing could be further from the truth.
On Thursday and Friday, the show floor was packed to the point of making it hard to walk the aisles, and all the exhibitors I spoke with were happy with the number of visitors they received. After all, even if there are more than 20,000 people attending in general, only some percentage of those people can physically walk past any given booth in a day. And while there were fewer people walking the floor on Saturday, IDG could have done a much better job of advertising in local media to alert San Franciscans who aren’t highly involved with the Apple world.
Most attendees I spoke with weren’t bothered by Apple being a no-show since, after all, they could just go to an Apple retail store or somewhere like Small Dog’s S. Burlington store to see all of Apple’s products. And exhibitors were downright happy that Apple wasn’t there, since it meant more attention for them, something that was especially important for iPhone developers who compete in the vast ocean of the App Store and get few chances to communicate with their users.
The lack of larger exhibitors like Adobe, FileMaker, and Canon, and medium-sized companies like SmileOnMyMac, Peachpit Press, O’Reilly Media, and Smith Micro was more keenly felt, but at least some of those companies will likely be back next year, having seen that Macworld Expo is far from being a deceased parrot.”
—Adam Engst, TidBITS publisher
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