By AppleInsider Staff
Published: 02:00 PM EST (11:00 AM PST)
Organizers for the Apple Expo in Paris confirmed Wednesday that the annual trade show has been canceled indefinitely, with this year's show likely having been its last.
Word of the show's demise came just hours after Apple's surprising announcement that it will
no longer participate in the stateside Macworld Expo, which has traditionally seen chief executive Steve Jobs unveil the company's latest product innovations during an inaugural keynote address.
Jobs had also been a fixture at the Paris expo until 2004, when he was forced to undergo surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. Although the Apple co-founder was scheduled to present the keynote address the following year, he subsequently canceled and has not made an appearance at the show since.
Still, Apple remained an exhibitor at the show until this year, when they company quietly backed out of the conference with out providing a formal explanation. Apple Expo was once the world's largest Apple trade conference, attracting more than 90,000 attendees a year during its prime.
Attendance fell to 54,000 last year as Apple, facing last minute delays in launching the iPhone locally, was unable to show off the touch-screen handset during the conference. The French-language
Mac4Ever, which broke the news of next year's Apple Expo cancelation, said the attendance for this year's show fell to 30,000.
Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years. Its decision to forgo Apple Expo and Macworld San Francisco follows its departure the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), Macworld New York, and Macworld Tokyo trade shows.
Both Macworld and Apple Expo stretch back 25 years.
