Macworld Conference & Expo Tokyo 2001 has come and gone, and the show’s coordinator, IDG Japan, has released the official attendance numbers. According to IDG, slightly less than 181,000 attendees visited this year’s show, keeping pace with but not growing remarkably from the 2000 show’s attendance figures.
Macworld Expo Tokyo was held from February 22-24 at Makuhari Messe, in Chiba prefecture, Japan. The show was Apple’s venue to introduce a newly revamped line of iMac systems, a new Cube configuration, and some other changes to the product line.
In addition to some controversial new case color designs, the iMacs now feature FireWire and AirPort compatibility across the entire product line. CD-RW is featured in some models, and faster processors abound. Apple and Nvidia also shared the spotlight to unveil the GeForce3, Nvidia’s newest graphics chip. The GeForce3 will ship on build-to-order Power Mac G4s beginning next month and will be available as an upgrade kit for older systems in April.
Attendees at last week’s show noted that the number of vendors participating in Macworld Expo Tokyo were fewer than the year before. The smaller number of vendors at Macworld Expo Tokyo may be explained by the frequency of computer trade shows in Japan, reported MacCentral’s Dennis Sellers in a recent article.
The next Macworld Expo event will be held in New York City this July 17-20, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, the show’s summer home since 1998. That’s hardly Apple’s only stop, though — the company has a busy season of trade show and conference appearances between now and then, with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference, Game Developers Conference, Apple’s own Worldwide Developer Conference, and many other events scheduled between now and then.