For the second year in a row, there will be no Comdex IT trade show in Las Vegas this November, largely a result of a continuing lack of interest and financial commitments from major vendors.
San Francisco-based MediaLive International Inc., which has promoted the show since 2003, on Wednesday confirmed that the event is again being canceled. It was last held in November 2003.
“Since the postponement of Comdex 2004 we’ve been working diligently to determine how Comdex can best meet the future needs of the industry,” Ben Stricker, a spokesman for MediaLive International, said in a statement. “Through our continued discourse across the community of IT buyers, vendors and other stakeholders, we’ve made significant progress. However, considerable work remains to build an industry event to serve the industry as it matures with the same success that Comdex did in its infancy.”
This year’s show had been scheduled for Nov. 13-17 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The promoters said that they “continue to believe that the US$1 trillion IT industry needs an annual event” and that they remain committed to bringing Comdex back in 2006.
The company said much the same thing last June when it canceled the 2004 show, and fully expected to be bringing it back to life this November.
A few weeks later, the show’s organizers announced the creation of a Comdex advisory board, composed of vendor representatives, to help rework the event into something more useful to sponsors and attendees.
The last Comdex left some attendees wondering if they would return in future years. The 2003 event had been touted by organizers as smaller and more IT-focused. Many attendees said it made them realize smaller, more-targeted IT shows were more beneficial to them in the long run, especially if they required less travel. About 40,000 visitors attended Comdex 2003, down from some 200,000 in its heyday during the 1990s.
MediaLive plans to hold a much smaller European Comdex in Greece at the Expo Athens Exhibition Center. Some 25,000 attendees are expected at the Nov. 18-20 show.