Politics, not platelets, are why Steve Jobs is turning over the Keynote responsibility to Phil Schiller at next month’s Macworld Conference & Expo, according to CNBC correspondent Jim Goldman.
Citing “sources inside the company,” Goldman writes that Jobs’ demurral from the Keynote address for Apple’s last appearance at the venerable trade show in San Francisco is assuredly not a product of any inability on his part to perform for health reasons, but is rather a result of the company’s “trying to separate itself from Macworld for some time.” Amid the growing trend of big companies scaling back participation in traditional trade shows world wide, Apple has also in recent years taken the lead in producing its own product release events, such as the ones that introduced the company’s new iPods this summer and new notebook computers in the fall.
Apple also directly reaches millions of visitors who come weekly to its growing chain of world-wide retail stores, and millions more who receive the company’s carefully designed and controlled messaging through visits to the company’s iTunes stores.
Knowing how the Apple-interested universe’s collective pulse begins to race with every inkling of Jobs’ mortality, it’s no surprise to see Monday’s announcement generate lots of speculation and extra volatility in the movement of the company’s stock price. As Goldman writes, however, the party to be concerned about is not Jobs, and not Apple, but Macworld. For some time now it’s been fashionable to imagine scenarios about Apple in the inevitable post-Jobs era. But will there even be a Macworld in the post-Apple era?
2 responses to “Jobs is Fine, It’s Macworld We Should Worry About”
To answer the question directly, likely not.
Without Apple there to highlight the show, there’s no reason for anyone else to attend unless they need an audience for their product launches or want to network with other development houses, product producers, or software developers. As soon as Apple goes, all of the other moneymaking large names will go, and it’ll trickle down pretty quickly I think.
Like I mentioned in another comment, it’s not Apple I’m worried about – there’s no reason to be worried about Apple – they can get attention exceptionally easy these days, it’s the developers and small companies who depend on MacWorld for their businesses who should be worried, and in turn, Apple should be worried about them unless they think memories are too short to matter in comparison to the bottom line.