14 DAY TRIAL // It might be a big and, dare I say it, dangerous stretch to imply that a world-class product convention will soon lose relevance, but today I am feeling brave so I am going out on a limb and say that quite a few of them will suffer precisely that.
This past week, a colleague of mine and I were sent to represent Softpedia at the Mobile World Congress trade show, which took place in Barcelona, Spain, between February 24 and February 27.
Granted, we got there on Friday the twenty-first, because we had a bunch of early press releases and product showcase events lined up.
It all sounds pretty straightforward, right? Go on a delegation, attend pre-show press events, then when everything is official spend a few days roaming around the venue and take hands-on photos of the products there.
And it was, but, by the time it was all over, I realized that I had marched around the place and ended up about as tired and plagued by sore feet as I did when I went to IFA 2013, back in early September 2013.
Now consider this: while big, the exhibition grounds in Barcelona are, in fact, a fair bit smaller than those in Berlin, even after taking into account the Summer Garden in the middle of it.
That can only mean that I had at least as many stands to visit, or more. They were just clustered closer together, but that only meant I spent more time standing in place. Which, for me, is worse than walking around.
In other words, the product amount, if not variety, showcased at MWC 2014 was on par with the one at IFA, or close enough to make me think.
The underdogs
The Mobile World Congress, also known as 3GSM or 3GSM World, has overtaken other tech shows in terms of importance and will probably continue to do so.
First off, CES (Consumer Electronics Show), which takes place in Las Vegas every January, used to be a major part of the technology industry.
But it lost a lot of its importance quickly over the past few years, because companies were more comfortable taking their time to refine their offerings until a bit later (in time for MWC and CeBIT, as it were) and because PCs are simply losing appeal in the face of mobile gadgets.
Nowadays, CES seems to be little more than a stage for marketing stunts, to give some life to the slow season, which is a term often used to refer to the first quarter of every year.
CeBIT (held every March), currently the largest and "most international" computer expo, is losing ground as well because, again, consumer PCs are losing importance in the face of smartphones, tablets, and wearable gadgets (from wrist fitness trackers to smartwatches and augmented reality headsets).
It will probably stay as the leading computer expo, but as a tech trade expo it will likely be overtaken by MWC soon enough.
Computex, which takes place in Taipei, Taiwan every June, won’t be doing any better. It already isn’t doing any better, though I doubt either of these two will stop being held anytime soon.
The rival
I would say that IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin) is under threat from MWC, but since it’s also very focused on consumer electronics and home appliances, it should actually keep ahead of MWC for a few years still, or maybe forever, because the Internet of Things will bring a lot of attention on appliances in the near- and mid-terms.
Also, IFA and MWC are very far apart, time-wise, and it’s normal for a lot of portable gadgets, smartphones, and tablets to show up in Berlin in the second half of the year, like it happens in Barcelona.
So I guess IFA might actually do what the opening keynote said last year: grow beyond every other. And since it includes mobile devices, I suppose it might maintain a bigger importance than MWC after all.
Still, even with IFA maintaining and increasing its prestige, there is no question that all other tech trade shows are now playing second fiddle to MWC, in a sense.
The implications
Basically, mobile gadgets will be on the lips of everyone with TV and Internet access within a year or so. I could say that’s already the case, but for now desktops and laptops still concern a lot of people greatly.
Nonetheless, with cloud servers doing a lot of the work, soon even games will be played purely on remote hardware, online, so you won’t need a strong desktop anymore, unless you’re a hardcore enthusiast.
And with even phones beginning to use HD and Full HD screens (1366 x 768 and 1920 x 1080 pixels), we might see DirectX 11 games streamed right to your 6-inch phone within five years, or ten.
The only reason PCs and game consoles will maintain an essential, albeit smaller, role is that they get larger TVs/monitors and have actual peripherals. After all, touch-based controls aren’t usable for all kinds of games, and the most immersive ones need a gamepad or keyboard+mouse for full enjoyment.
Still, the consumer market for PCs is decreasing, steadily and surely, to the point where there aren’t as many, and as many related accessories, to show off at trade shows.
Soon enough, companies will have to switch focus to professional systems/workstations, used by graphics and video designers and such. And they’ll have to do it fast if they don’t want to end up like Acer, who is still struggling, years after being caught flat-footed by the almost instant fall of the netbook market (low-end but very cheap laptops that the company made a lot of money off until tablets emerged and ruined everything).
And it’s not like Acer is alone in that. Most HDD makers had to be bought by the big three (Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba) and pretty much every PC maker that isn’t called Lenovo has been suffering the effects of the flagging PC industry.
All this points towards significantly less massive and attended trade shows not too far down the line, and towards PCs becoming a minority, like smartphones were not too long ago.