Comdex trade show canceled

The annual Comdex computer exhibition in Las Vegas, once one of the nation's biggest trade shows, has been canceled for 2004, the victim of declining attendance and waning interest from major computer firms.

''While we could still run a profitable Comdex, we didn't think it benefited the industry to do so without the support of leading vendors," said Eric Faurot, vice president of MediaLive International, the company that ran Comdex.

But Faurot said he's committed to reviving the show. MediaLive International has set up a committee of representatives from major computer firms, including EMC Corp. of Hopkinton. The committee will advise MediaLive on how to redesign Comdex so that industry-leading companies will once again want to attend.

Despite the cancellation of the Las Vegas Comdex, the smaller international Comdex shows, held in Brazil, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Greece, and Sweden, will go on.

Comdex was born in 1979, in the early days of personal computing. At its height during the late 1990s, Comdex drew over 200,000 people to Las Vegas each November, and occupied over a million square feet of exhibition space.

But the show fell on hard times at the turn of the century. The tech industry slump that began in 2000 was compounded by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which scared away many international visitors.

Last year, about 45,000 visitors and 500 companies showed up.

Although the computer industry has returned to health, many companies have lost interest in general-interest trade shows like Comdex, which had a reputation for being too consumer-oriented. Instead, computer firms prefer to attend more specialized events that attract the kinds of buyers they want to reach.

''Certainly the trend has been toward smaller, more vertical, more highly specialized events, not only in the computer industry, but in the healthcare industry and several others," said Douglas Ducate, president of the Center for Exhibition Industry Research in Chicago.

As Comdex has waned, another annual technology festival has prospered. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), also held in Las Vegas, drew 129,000 visitors and 2,500 exhibitors in January, each a new record for the event.

One reason, said Ducate, is that CES is run by the Consumer Electronics Association, a nonprofit industry group whose members exhibit at the show.

''They've . . . done a terrific job of looking after their exhibitors," Ducate said.

By contrast, Comdex is run by MediaLive, an independent business which seeks to make a profit from the fees it charges exhibitors. The exhibiting companies have no stake in MediaLive, and therefore have much less incentive to attend Comdex.

Ducate said MediaLive may try to imitate the CES model.

''The likelihood is that Comdex is going to move toward the professional associations and build some alliances," he said.

Ducate noted that rival exhibition companies may try to grab the visitors and exhibitors who would otherwise have gone to Comdex. Even in last year's diminished form, the show was a major draw.

''A show with 40,000 attendees," said Ducate, ''that's still something a lot of people would die for."

Faurot said that MediaLive will redesign Comdex, based on the advice it gets from the industry advisory board. Representatives of Microsoft Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., and Oracle Corp. have already been named; Intel Corp., Dell Inc., and Cisco Systems Inc. have also expressed interest in joining the group.

Mark Fredrickson, EMC's vice president of corporate communications, said he was involved in discussions about having EMC's chief executive, Joe Tucci, give one of the keynote addresses at this year's Comdex. Though the talks fell through, Fredrickson agreed to join the Comdex advisory board. He believes that MediaLive wants to turn Comdex into a serious gathering for major-league technology buyers and sellers.

''They want to become much more of a place for enterprise technology vendors to meet with the kind of customers we're targeting, as opposed to a consumer gadget show," Fredrickson said.

But Greg Strakosch, chief executive of Needham's TechTarget Inc., which runs specialized technology trade shows, said that Comdex is unlikely to get a second chance.

''No event that I know of has ever taken a year off and come back," Strakosch said. ''I'd be absolutely shocked if they came back."

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.