A NAB without Apple, say it ain’t so!

The Mac blog site Macenstien reported last week that Apple would not be purchasing a booth at this year’s National Association of Broadcasters convention. Apple has traditionally had a huge presence at the annual event which is held the first week of April in Las Vegas. The NAB is the largest convention for broadcasters, video professionals and filmmakers in the US. Apple has used the convention to launch it’s professional video and film applications like Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio.
Avid, Apple’s chief competitor in the video editing software market, had announced earlier that they would not be renting a booth at NAB.
Anuj Nayar, senior manager of PR at Apple said “Apple is participating in fewer trade shows this year,” And that “Often there are better ways to reach our customers. The increasing popularity of our retail stores and Apple.com Web site allows us to directly reach more than 100 million customers around the world in innovative new ways.”
The speculation is that without Avid there, that is was hard for Apple to justify the expense of a large Apple presence at NAB. Others are taking this as a bellwether that Apple is diverting some of it’s resource away from the pro/niche markets to concentrate on mass market products like iPods and iTunes. This is despite the fact that sales for computers were up and iPods were down last quarter.
All I know is that I’m going to have a tough time convincing my Boss to buy a ticket to Las Vegas this year.