CeBIT's days could be numbered

IS SNOWBIT A LAME duck trade show? Many companies are considering calling off their attendance at CeBit 2008 after a poor result from the trade show this year.

Our own Martin Veitch wrote a piece about the event last week, criticising it for being overly big and incredibly boring. Journalists have, for years, lamented the terrible location and lack of accommodation. Some have been waiting for the bottom to fall out of CeBit for a few years now.

Well it seems like that just might be kicking off. This year, 602 Taiwan vendors made the trip over to reach European customers, down from 711 last year, according to DigiTimes. That trend looks set to continue, as the Chinese language Commercial Times reports that both Asus and Gigabyte are seriously considering pulling out of the show for next year.

Notable no-shows this year included Shuttle, Acer and HTC, whilst Intel and Nvidia also scaled back their presences. There was a complete lack of official news at the show, with no new graphics or processor announcements, a sorry state of affairs given the previous monopoly CeBit had on product launches in the Q1 timeframe.

Whilst many were hoping that the recent releases of Windows Vista and Windows Mobile 6 would buoy the number of new products and exhibitors at the show, the general consensus among attendees seems to be that that wasn't the case.

It seems SnoBit could soon become NoBit.