IDG opens second annual Macworld Asia event in Beijing
updated 11:43 pm EDT, Thu August 2, 2012
Unofficial Apple show features beauty pageant, more
Conference organizer IDG has opened the doors to the second annual Macworld Asia, a trade show featuring local and international vendors of Apple accessories, keynote speeches, an exhibition floor and developer forum. Exhibitors familiar to North American Macworld attendees included Logitech, LaCie and Macally, according to a report from The Next Web. The show is similar to its US counterpart, with award ceremonies, showcases and product demos.
Technode will be sponsoring a half-day-long developer forum on Friday, featuring three sessions on Mobile Games, Product Design and Marketing. Speaking at the forum will be Gray Mi, the director of PopCap Asia; SNSGames CEO Xu Lei; Eric Chen, the marketing director from Evernote, and representatives from Flipboard, Hunan University and Dolphin Browser.
The conferences' keynote will be handled by Kingsoft CEO Fu Sheng. It also includes a sort of beauty pageant competition to find the "Macworld Girl" (such exhibitions are common in Asian tradeshows). The theme of the conference is "connecting experiences, influencing [the] future." Pictures taken by the site showed a hall heavy with exhibits for iOS products and accessories, demonstrating the growth in popularity of Apple's mobile products (seen below). Other companies not directly related to Apple used the conference to show off their own products, such as an automobile showcase from car maker Ferrari.
The conference runs through August 5, and the dates for next year's show have already been announced: August 22-25, 2013 in the same venue, the National Convention Center. Apple itself dropped its participation in most tradeshows in 2009 in order to have the freedom to announce products on its own timetable.
