June 8th, 2009
Computex attendance falls, but Android 'coming out party' succeeds
The weeklong Computex Taipei 2009 electronics show wrapped up Saturday with lower attendance from last year, despite mobile manufacturers using the show as a splashy introduction to a wealth of Google Android-based products.
An estimated 100,000 people visited Computex Taipei 2009 from around the world, down a bit from 106,517 last year, according to figures from the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA). The show’s final numbers were down nearly across the board from last year, but not by much with consideration to a global recession and an H1N1 swine flu outbreak.
The totals include 32,178 international buyers, down from 34,685 last year, and 1,712 exhibitors, down from 1,750. The only figure that improved was the amount of booths rented, which rose to 4,498 this year from about 4,000 last year.
There remains some discrepancy over the official numbers.
Nevertheless, this was the first year Chinese companies were officially welcomed at Computex. (Political differences between Taiwan and China have kept a damper on the presence of Chinese firms in the past.)
Over 130 Chinese companies had booths this year, according to TAITRA. But the aisles of Chinese company booths were empty compared to other areas of the exhibition, some said, and global deal-making and relationship-building was limited compared to last year.
Some companies are reevaluating participation in next year’s event.
The good news? The number of new gadgets and announcements kept pace with last year’s totals, and the show marked a big coming-out party for Google Android.
Check out ZDNet’s complete coverage of Computex:
- Computex 2009 slideshow: ARM smartbooks, Android netbooks, ULV laptops, Moblin and more
- Computex: AMD previews first DX11 GPU, Nvidia focuses on mobile
- Intel finally announces ULV, drops the “C”
- To Jim Zemlin this CompuTex represents progress
- Microsoft: No Windows 7 for ARM-based netbooks (for now)
- New dual, triple and quad core CPUs from AMD
- Intel announces new chips, excited about notebooks, WiMax
- Asus Eee PC spotted running Android, Qualcomm CPU
- Asus will launch budget O!Play media streamer at Computex
Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet.
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