CTIA Expects Rebound At 25th Anniversary Show

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 3/8/2010

LAS VEGAS — CTIA-The Wireless Association will mark its silver anniversary as a producer of wireless-industry trade shows next month during International CTIA Wireless 2010, where a large retail contingent will seek out new wireless-enabled CE devices and smartphones to sell and wireless IT equipment to help them sell those products more profitably.

“Retailers were the No. 1 demographic at last year’s event for the fi rst time, and we expect that to continue in 2010, or at least tie,” said Robert Mesirow, CTIA VP and show director.

Mesirow also expects attendance to rebound following last year’s decline to 34,000, which came during the height of the recession and the fi nancial crisis. Attendees will get the opportunity to visit about 1,000 booths, similar to the booth counts in 2008 and 2009. Gross square exhibit space of more than 300,000 square feet will be set up in the convention center’s North and Central halls.

“We expect a good bounce in total attendance and overall enthusiasm,” he added.

Acknowledging the growing retail contingent at last year’s event, CTIA aggregated all retail- oriented exhibitors into a Retail Zone whose presence has attracted more retail-focused booths than last year, or more than 150, Mesirow said. The Zone will consume almost 50 percent of the exhibit space in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center during the March 23-25 convention.

The Zone will include an Accessories Pavilion, which will house manufacturer and distributor exhibits, and a Retail Resource Pavilion, which will showcase services and tools that retailers can use to boost productivity, including refurbishing programs. Also on display will be point-of-sale devices, kiosks, inventorycontrol solutions and “whatever else helps retailers sell phones,” Mesirow said.

Mobile CE devices such as e-readers, mobile internet devices, netbooks and the like will also get a prominent display in their own section near the retail area, Mesirow said. Such wireless-embedded devices are changing the business model for carriers and retailers, he noted.

A dedicated space for mobile apps will also debut, taking up about 35 percent of the North Hall, Mesirow said. “We’ve been developing the developer community since 1994, but now they have a place to come.”

In another sign of industry’s changes over the years, CTIA has targeted 12 vertical industries for a special focus at the show. Mobile Life is the show’s theme, and wireless helps the 12 vertical industries deliver the theme’s promise, Mesirow said. The industries include social networking, the intelligent transportation industry, the health industry, mobile CE, the machine-to-machine industry, cloud computing, mobile advertising and mobile banking, among others.

A refreshed seminar series will also debut. “There is a lot of fresh thinking with new topics and new show areas to push the industry forward to new areas,” Mesirow said. More seminars on fi xed-mobile convergence are among the changes, as are more retail topics, he said.

For the daily keynote events, a global group of carrier CEOs will take the keynote stage, including executives from AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Sprint Nextel and Telefónica.

Movie director James Cameron, U.S. Offi ce of Science and Technology Policy chief technical offi cer Aneesh Chopra, and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone will take the stage on Day Three to discuss how wireless is transforming the business, media and the economy.

Key handset suppliers exhibiting at the show include AnyDATA, HTC America, Haier, Hauwei, Hewlett-Packard, Jitterbug, Kyocera Communications, LG Electronics MobileComm, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, PCD (Personal Communications Devices) Samsung Telecommunications America, TerreStar and ZTE. Exhibiting carriers include AT&T, Clearwire, Sprint and T-Mobile. Wireless-modem makers include Sierra Wireless.