COMDEX is Dead
I said it last year, “This is my last COMDEX for COMDEX is dead” Yet, I went again. Just to see.
It’s true. Last year was the death of COMDEX. This year was the ‘viewing’. All that’s left is to toss dirt in the grave.
The entire show was in the main hall. North hall was closed. Of course, no Hilton hall.
The ENTIRE show was in the main hall. Nothing in the foyer separating the north from the main hall. To help fill space, registration was placed in the main hall.
A curtain cut down the length of the hall and over on one end creating a huge L-shape that was not used. It seemed that total floor space was less than a fourth of last year. And last year was down.
Even with greatly reduced floor space, the floor was not crowded.
There were a few parties. Not many.
I walked the entire floor in three hours. That included talking with several folks about Gwailo Joe.
The only real ‘news’ was Microsoft. They always have something. They are going to kick ass in enterprise. .Net will smoke Sun, Seybold, Oracle, SAP in selected areas. No doubt.
Personally, I believe if Apple doesn’t get on board with some kind of .net enterprise response (even ‘cooperating’ with Bill), they will continue to decline in global market share and can kiss any hope of gaining inroads into corporate mainstream good bye. My Mac brethren will rankle at my words but that’s how I see it.
Dell was there. I wanted to see the new Dell portable jukebox and PDA. Nope. Their booth was focused on channel development, not showing end users cool stuff. That’s wise on their part.
There was the expected ‘backroom suites’ stuff, but that was way down.
I really believe COMDEX should be fractured into component parts and sent to other, existing shows.
* CES for the consumer stuff
* Networld+interop for the networking stuff
The rest of COMDEX has already left for Asia.
COMDEX, you will be warmly remembered. Rest in Peace, old friend.