ANAHEIM, CA (SIGGRAPH 2013) July 25 2013 - It's no secret that industry trade shows have passed their heyday. But SIGGRAPH seemed to be holding its own. Born in 1973, the show quickly became the premier show for the graphics industry, where anyone involved with special effects, graphics, or cutting edge hardware, came to see and be seen. Despite the recession of late, the aisles of SIGGRAPH seemed to be packed, its booth space filled.
Not so, says industry analyst Jon Peddie, who heads Jon Peddie Research, and who is not fooled by crowds. He looks at numbers. His
analysis exposes an illusion. For years, the number of exhibitors and attendees
has been going down. It's all up there on the screen,
indisputable.
"Graphics processing is more popular than ever," says Jon, referring to the mobile devices and cloud computing, which we all have come to use and rely. "How can the show that started it all fail to keep up?"
A look at Jon's slide reveals exhibitors peaked and started falling off almost 20 years ago. The number of attendees kept going up for a few more years, but then started to decline as well. Both attendees and exhibitors have been on about the same depressingly downwards slope for a few years now.