Is Apple anger behind Jobs no-show at Paris Expo?

By Stan Beer
Sunday, 20 August 2006 15:39

Opinion and Analysis

The absence of Steve Jobs at the upcoming Apple Expo in Paris next month has tongues wagging with speculation that the Apple boss is snubbing the show because of French Government attempts to interfere with the company's iTunes and iPod business model. However, the speculation is probably off the mark.

France and the Scandinavian trio of Norway, Sweden and Denmark are spearheading a European push to force Apple to open up its iTunes online music store to portable music players other than iPod. Apple makes most of its money in the music business from iPod sales largely driven by iTunes downloads.

Macworld UK has reported that this year there will be no keynote address at the Apple Expo, which runs from September 12-16, making it the third year running that Jobs has not presented to the gathering, which is the biggest Mac event in Europe.

Given the size of the Apple Expo and the European marketplace, where Apple holds a very strong position, it would seem to be very unlikely that Apple pique with a government is behind the lack of a keynote or the absence of Jobs.

Following announcements and previews at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco earlier this month, Apple has been on media roadshows to the various local markets outside the US showing off new technologies such as the upcoming Leopard and the new Intel Mac Pro.

There is already a lot of new information about the Mac platform for the market to digest and it's quite possible that Jobs fired all his bullets at WWDC.