Steve Jobs Will MAY Be At Macworld Expo, Event Manager Says

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on December 15, 2008

Apple CEO Steve Jobs will give his usual keynote address at the Macworld Expo next month, says the show’s general manager.

Paul Kent, VP at IDG World Expo and the general manager of the Macworld show, set to start on Jan. 5, assured me in a phone conversation this morning that the joint announcement between IDG and Apple is due to come soon. “We haven’t made the announcement yet. We usually do this in concert with Apple…I have no reason to believe that plans are not moving ahead,” for Jobs to speak.

Update: 2:30 PM EST: Now Paul Kent is clarifying his statement. Here it is verbatim: “We haven’t made an announcement yet. We hope to in the next two weeks.” Rather than clearing up the picture, it just got muddy again.

Buzz is beginning to build that Jobs might not appear at the annual event. With only three weeks to go, Jobs is not confirmed as giving his annual keynote, and this has prompted some, including Daniel Steinberg over at O’Reilly Media to speculating that something’s up, especially in the wake of Adobe scaling back its presence at the show, and Belkin pulling out altogether. As yet the relevant page on the Macworld Expo site mentions nothing about the Apple CEO.

Kent says despite the announcements from Adobe and Belkin, the show has more total exhibitors than in 2008, and that confirmed attendance is as about even from last year.

Apple PR hasn’t yet returned a call on the subject (I’ll update this post if and when I hear from them).

If Jobs were to skip Macworld, it would be universally seen as a bad thing. First, speculation about his health would spook Wall Street once more. Additionally, there’s concern that Apple doesn’t have much to crow about in the product pipeline.

David Bailey at Goldman Sachs, in a rather negative research note issued Dec. 14 wherein he downgrades his rating on Apple, said as much. Weaker consumer spending is starting to drag Apple down, he says. Plus “…the nearer-term outlook is less positive, as it now looks unlikely that Apple will launch a new product category at Macworld in early January, taking away a potential catalyst for the shares and causing Apple to try to generate demand in a tough environment without the benefit of a new offering in the first part of 2009.”

It’s a little unclear how much Jobs may have to say in a keynote. Snow Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X will no doubt figure prominently, and there can easily be some incremental updates to existing product lines. One persistent rumor calls for an iPhone nano, while another focuses on a Web tablet, which would essentially be an iPod touch with a larger screen and perhaps some other enhancements. Those might be enough. But as I argued in October, the next logical step for Apple isn’t completely clear.

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