The Mobile Internet World trade show, produced in Boston in 2007 and 2008 by the Trendsmedia events division of Boston-based market research firm Yankee Group, will be transplanted to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2009 and revamped as a “more intimate” conference focused on networking and education, according to a Trendsmedia announcement.
The announcement, e-mailed to 2008 conference attendees today, said the decision to move the convention from the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center to the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport Hotel and drop the exhibit-hall showcase aspect of the event was “based on popular demand,” but that it would also allow Yankee Group to avoid “supporting major trade show costs and resources.”
One mobile executive recently told Xconomy that the program, the size of the crowd, and the volume of business-development opportunities at Mobile Internet World 2008 were disappointingly slim. So the move to the Bay Area could well represent an attempt to repackage the conference—which is aimed at executives from wireless operators, application developers, and other companies involved in delivering services and information via mobile Web browsers—to have a bigger payoff for attendees.
In the Bay Area, the conference will also be closer to two new centers of power in the mobile applications business: Cupertino, CA-based Apple, whose decision to open up the iPhone to third-party application developers has created a huge new market for mobile software, and Mountain View, CA-based Google, whose open-source Android mobile operating system is expected to further disrupt the industry.
