WTF? – Apple Drops Out of NAB 2008
Apple, who has traditionally had one of the largest booths at the NAB Tradeshow, has announced it will not be purchasing a booth at the event this year.
“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.â€
Given Apple’s huge push in recent years into the film/video/animation industry, this move is fairly major news. While this does not necessarily mean Apple will not conduct user groups or smaller hands-on events (although that quote does not sound promising), “scaling back” their presence at NAB is almost up there with “scaling back” their presence at Macworld.
It’s looking like this year’s NAB will not be the hotbed of digital editing that it was n years past, as only a few months ago, Avid announced it too would not have an NAB booth this year.
Looks like shouldn’t be expecting any huge updates to the Final Cut suite this April.
🙁
[UPDATE: TVTechnoogy is reporting that the NAB’ Dennis Wharton has confirmed Apple’s pullout, but adds that “We’re talking about some on-site business opportunities with Apple.” So take from that what you will. Hopefully there will be some sort of Apple presence at the event, although no floor presence.]
Well, THAT sucks…
About bloody time… conventions are going the way of the dodo bird. What new information will you get at a convention that you didn’t already have weeks or months before? The internet is the way to go.
how about a link to the press release?
some how I dont think apple would pull out of NAB
Shit. Their booth usually took up like half the damn floor!
Wonder what that’s gonna cost the NAB promoters?
DWalla,
Conventions used to also be about selling and making deals. They are starting to go back to that. Which is GReat!
As for Apple. I think they are making a very clear statement that they are really going to be moving away from the digital editing and effects market. Their money is in ipods, iphones and other mass consumer goods, not the niche market that is video and film.
Based on a very educated guess, Apple’s booth space and booth structure was probably in the neighborhood of 3.5 million dollars. This doesn’t include personnel, marketing, promotion, travel, lodging, food, etc.
Wouldn’t be surprised if this was the beginning of the end of NAB. I used to go but quickly realized that I could find out as much info on the web. With TV station budgets being slashed and no cable expansion, big vendors like Sony and others might find it tempting to bail as well. BTW, latest conference call noted the Pro Services (FCP and related) were a strong profit generator. I doubt they’re moving away from high-end post (they’re embracing the RED camera, how consumer is that?), its just that the high end post market is much broader than NAB now and Apple and Avid may be realizing that.
Dd Apple even ever deliver the Final cut server thing they talked about LAST NAB?
I haven’t heard of anyone using it…
No delivery of Final Cut Server yet. I’ve been told the engineers were making it a Leopard-only release and that I had to be at NAB this year for some big announcements. Crazy. After NAB 2007 we ditched AVID and bought 7 Mac Pros, 4 MacBook Pros, 3 XServes, 3 XServe RAIDs with 22 TB of storage, and XSAN. Apple’s demo of Final Cut Server and the promise of integrated media management was a major factor in justifying our decision to leave the AVID Unity environment. Cost was the #1 factor as our entire purchase was still less than our maintenance agreement with AVID, not to mention the cost of ‘upgrading’ to Interplay. That ‘upgrade’ was a joke – it would have required ripping out our 2-year-old UNITY and replacing everything. Anyway – interesting move on Apple’s part if this whole thing is true. I’ll be there, the ticket’s already bought. Maybe I’ll get better face time with some reps and engineers. We’ll see. BTW – I LOVE the workflow we’ve got going right now – even without Final Cut Server. Still on Tiger, though.
Apple is NOT moving away from the video and effects market. You’ve got to be kidding. They own over 50% of that market space and they aren’t leaving it anytime soon. Our studio owns 8 copies of FCP studio alone… and we’re just a small studio. Do you really think they are going to walk away from us dropping $5k a year on software? No… the age of conventions is over. I lived in Vegas for 10 years… this trend began about 5 years ago. All conventions are getting smaller because there is less need for them. The internet is so entrenched in day-to-day affairs that it serves little to no purpose…. especially since the cost of setting up a booth in these convention centers is staggeringly expensive.
Apple is NOT dropping out of the video market space. They practically own it. Who else is a real contender? Avid? Most people aren’t going to drop the money on Avid because the cost/return ratio is too high…. and it is buggy buggy buggy. FCP dominates the majority of the NLE world… and Apple’s not going to drop that anytime soon. I know… this is the market I work in.
http://www.apple.com/finalcutserver/
EXACTLY! When will they start selling FCS? I was Sure this would be their big thing at 2008 NAB(or just before NAB- like last year). But i guess the iphone, macair and ipod touch was more important for them to get out there! remember how long we were waiting or OS X 10.5?
I love this blog, and the fact that Toad The Wet Sprocket is on your 4 star or above list is AWESOME!!
Way2Poppy
http://www.konfrst.com/music
Owns the NLE market? Guys get your heads out of the sand… Premiere has more copies out then Finalcut and Grass Valley kicks FCP butt in broadcast everytime they are shown together.
FCP is a very small money maker for Apple and in fact, the rumor in the industry is that they are looking to sell it.
GOOD FOR APPLE , THESE CONVENTIONS HAVE BEEN OVERCHARGING EXHIBITORS MORE AND MORE EVERY YEAR .
MAYBY THE LAS VEGAS CONVENTION AND VISITORS AUTHORITY
AND N.A.B. WILL START TO GET THE MESSAGE . THIS IS PROBABLY THE BEGINNING OF THE END (4wonders