Macworld Tokyo — Visitors down 4.1 percent on last year

The three-day MacWorld Tokyo 2002 exhibition attracted 173,385 visitors between March 21 and its close on March 23, organizers said Monday. Among that number, 16,752 people entered the exhibition on more than one day.

The exhibition, which opened on a Japanese public holiday Thursday, attracted 53,766 people on the first day, beating the opening day attendance of the two previous MacWorld Tokyo shows but coming in behind 1999, which was the first year Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs attended and delivered a keynote speech, said Kimiko Niwa, a spokeswoman for Tokyo-based IDG Japan Inc., one of the organizers of the exhibition. IDG Japan is a subsidiary of IDG News Service’s parent company, International Data Group.

A keynote address by Jobs was also held this year and around 6,000 people attended.

The organizers had been hoping for 180,000 visitors over the three days, although second and third day attendance of 46,516 and 56,351, respectively, meant they could not reach the expected number, Niwa said.

A public holiday on Thursday, the first day of the show, helped boost visitor numbers. “Everybody came on the first day,” said Niwa. A lack of new products may have contributed to lower overall attendance.

The schedule also influenced the number of press that attended on the first day, she said. Because it was a public holiday, around 425 journalists came to cover the exhibition, compared to 700 last year, Niwa said.

The three-day total of 173,385 visitors was 4.1 percent down on the show last year, which had 180,810 visitors, Niwa said.