Apple Drops Out of NAB Show

February 7, 2008

Apple has announced that it will not have a booth at The NAB Show this
year.

Rumor had been spreading on the Internet in recent days about Apple's
presence at the show. Speculation increased after Avid Technology, the
company's main competitor at the NAB Show dropped out late last year.
An Apple spokesman said the company is cutting down on its trade show
participation overall.

"Apple is participating in fewer trade shows this year," said Anuj
Nayar, senior manager of PR at Apple. "Often there are better ways to
reach our customers. The increasing popularity of our retail stores
and Apple.com Web site allows us to directly reach more than 100
million customers around the world in innovative new ways."

Apple declined comment on the remaining extent of its participation at
the show, or whether it plans to return.

Dennis Wharton, spokesman for NAB said that the organization is
discussing partnerships with the company at the show.

"We're talking about some on-site business opportunities with Apple,"
he said.

From TVTechnology:
http://www.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0157/t.11096.html

Here's some Wild Speculation

There's some truth in the wild speculation, of course. Apple's interest in the pro video apps has been waning. 2005 was not "Year of HD."

Is that (waning) a natural cycle in software development? Is it part of a larger initiative at Apple to not attend Expositions like CES? Did iPhone development & Leopard development "derail" certain key Apple developments for next gen video development? Is the hi def DVD war to blame for lack of progress in hi def video apps? [Almost certainly. Prices are still high for disk burning tools, and manufacturers are just now delivering true HD camcorders - often in a plethora of proprietary recording formats. How do you write code for that situation? Apple also has about 2 dozen STANDARD video output formats to account for - most HDTV - not counting the variety of input formats they must deal with. Hardware specs are also rapidly changing, e.g., DisplayPort, HDMI, and bit depths. There's a lot of combinations and permutations that software authors must deal with - or wait for. ] On a personal level, I believe that the HDV format is unstable, and that we'll see a new consumer HD format soon, if the "recession" doesn't delay development efforts further. I hope Apple unilaterally delivers an embedded video color management solution, independent of slothful Sony-Philips and SMPTE.

The pundits of "Wild Specualtion" seem to have not considered many fundamental business factors. Apple appears to be less aggressive than they were in 2001 with video development during a similar unstable period in the digital video business. Most manufacturers and organizations seem to be very tentatively approaching HDTV, Apple included. Sony, who usually drives the video business, has experienced HUGE internal business problems. The worldwide recession cannot be a positive factor for video R&D. Consumer demand should be slackening soon. And perhaps Apple has found that Expositions like NAB really don't contribute to their development efforts very much, while draining substantial R&D dollars and resources from their coffers.

When a company doesn't show up at an Exposition, rumors start flying. Maybe Apple had the courage to dismiss the non-essentials, and focus on business fundamentals?

Major companies have been cutting back on "general purpose" trade shows for several years now and trade shows themselves have started to fade away (anyone remember, Comdex, Macworld NY, Seybold, Macworld Toronto, etc.)

It costs major companies like Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, etc. well over a million dollars to have a large presence at these shows not including staffing and travel costs. You might be thinking "well just cut down the size of the booth." That sends out an even worse message. These companies have the attitude that if the show is worth being at, they are going to be there STRONG and sizable. If not, then they aren't going to be there at all. I could hear it now, "did you see how small the Apple booth was? They must be on hard times!"

Apple probably gets way more traffic and qualified customers through its very large retail store chain. If they have something major to announce, they can do so via a press conference (as we've seen in the past). I'm also sure that they reach more people with their TV ads than they do with a booth at a week long trade show.

It's very very very difficult to time product releases around trade show dates. If you have nothing new to show, then you have customers constantly coming to your booth asking when is the next version of __________ coming out? I'm also sure that's why they pulled their booth down at PMA. No new version of Aperture and angry customers coming up asking about the status of it. A waste of time and money. So if there wasn't/isn't a new version of FCP ready to go for April, why waste the estimated $3+ million dollars to be at the show to show what they showed last year? I would rather see Apple put that money into R&D.

Chatter on the FCP and Avid editors lists hints that Apple will indeed be in Vegas at NAB time, but not on the expo floor. Avid, also not showing at the NAB, has already said they will be holding events and person-to-person sessions nearby. Very possible Apple may do something along that line as well.