Off on the road again

Vietnam this week. The trade show industry is at an interesting phase there and we'll be meeting a number of organisers and trade associations to try to get a clearer idea of what is going on. Blogging will probably be thin but we'll try to give a few notes along the way.

Watching signals

"For us, it will be a matter of watching for signals from Beijing. If they make it clear that Hong Kong is an important event for them, we'll have to be there," said a spokesman for one of the largest U.S. aerospace firms.

That quote in a Reuters round-up on Asian Aerospace makes it overwhelmingly clear why Reed has chosen a China/Asia location for the show when it moves from Singapore.

The flip side of this is restrictions on defense sales to China which will limit the range of products on show (although Hong Kong does come under a different export controls regime to the rest of China). Another company officials is quoted as noting that "This is China we're talking about, of course. So you're not going to see an F-15 flying around".

We'll give the air show stuff a rest for a while. It's been fun watching though!

Binzhou Air Show

Amid all the excitement the Reed/Singapore split, Asian Aerospace and the new Singapore Air Show (see here and here), we fear that news of the Binzhou General Aviation Expo in Shandong province, China may have slipped through un-noticed.

In case that might provoke a thought of "where" from you, I post this handy link from the Shandong provincial authorities and this one from the Ministry of Commerce.

Who to believe?

Either:

RESERVATIONS for exhibition space at Singapore's new airshow are flying in — ironically, via the very show it will be replacing.

.

The Singapore Airshow, to be held in 2008, will take over from Asian Aerospace (AA), which will leave for Hong Kong after 25 years here.

.

Or:

Singapore's plans to launch a new air show in 2008 won't undermine Asia's largest aerospace exhibition, which is relocating from its longtime home in Singapore to Hong Kong, an industry official said Monday.

Asian Aerospace, billed as the biggest aerospace and defense technology exhibition in the region, kicks off Tuesday for the final time in Singapore, where it has been held biannually since 1981.

The event will move to the AsiaWorld-Expo complex, next to Hong Kong International Airport, on Sept. 3-6 next year because of "strong, logical commercial reasons," said Mike Rusbridge, chairman of the show's organizer, Reed Exhibitions.

...and may the best man win!

Cybermedia buys into Sx2

It is rare for us to report on an acquisition by an Asian company in another part of the world. Pradeep Gupta's Cybermedia has taken a number of interesting steps on which we've reported over the last year or so (see here and here and here for examples). Its decision to acquire 20% of Sx2, the new owners of Computer Shopper magazine will be seen as a sign of growing maturity in India's B2B and technology media sector.

Since listing on the Mumbai stock exchange in May last year, Cybermedia's shares have increased in value by 71%, valuing the company today at $23.5 million at today's price of Rs102.40.

Alibaba.com launches trade show programme

Alibaba.com has announced the launch of a trade show partnership programme which Senior Director Brian Wong described at the UFI Asia/Pacific Seminar in Hong Kong today as the B2B equivalent of combining match.com and a romantic restaurant.

The announcement says:

The launch of the Alibaba.com Trade Show Partnership Program marks an
industry turning point where, instead of regarding each other as competitors,
trade show organizers and online marketplaces work together to grow both their
businesses.

A question to Wong from another speaker at the UFI event, David Cong of MeetExpo.com, would suggest that there may be a way to go still before the trust is complete although Alibaba is at pains to suggest that it has no intentions of going into the trade show business itself. Cong asked why organisers could not do themselves what Alibaba.com does online.

Full disclosure: the Alibaba.com release includes a quotation from me:

Industry analysts agree that with increased competition in Asia's trade
show sector, trade show organizers who adopt innovative media strategies will
have an edge over the competition.  Paul Woodward, Business Strategies Group
(BSG) founder and a veteran of business development in Asia with over 20 years
experience in the region, said: ''The Chinese exhibitions industry has been
growing at over 20% a year for the past five to 10 years.  It is increasingly
important for trade show organizers to distinguish the quality of their events
with much more sophisticated communications programs and doing so with the
right media partner.''

LVS Convention & Exhibition space in China

The China Stock Blog conveniently publishes transcripts of investor teleconferences for both mainland Chinese companies and those with strong interests in the region. Browsing through the Las Vegas Sands management team's recent comments in their Q4 earnings call, we noted CFO Scott Henry commenting that there would be event space at the Group's Hengqin Island development in Zhuhai, about 1 mile away from the Venetian Macao development. Their agreement with the local government, he said:

...would allow us to build between 40 and 50 million square feet of things. Those things could be anything from hotels, to second home apartments, to club houses to commercial facilities, we have built some convention, and some exhibition space there also...

Bill Weidner also comments that some of the expressions of interest for events in Macao on which we reported back in October are now being converted into signed contracts. "‘07 ‘08 are shaping up pretty well, particularly fall of ‘07", he says.

Office of Global Internet Freedom

The US Congress has a long history of poking sticks at China. The recent mauling of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Cisco over their PRC activities has caught everybody's attention. It is no surprise then, to find the proposed Global Online Freedom Act of 2006 directed squarely at China.

For John Battelle's take on this, see here. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey is behind the bill and his views on Google and the rest are on his own web page along with his introduction to the recent hearings titled "“The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?”.

CNET points out that "Nearly every U.S. company with a Web site located in China will have to move it elsewhere or its executives would face prison terms of up to a year" if the proposed legislation is enacted. The article goes on to question how likely Smith's Bill is to be successful:

It's unclear what the prospects are for the legislation, titled the Global Online Freedom Act of 2006. While the measure is likely to draw support from some politicians from both major parties, no companion version currently exists in the U.S. Senate, and election-year politics could complicate efforts to enact it anytime soon. Also, the proposal puts American businesses at a severe competitive disadvantage with China-based firms, which are immune from such rules and can locate servers in China and offer much faster response times for Internet users in that country.

China online advertising hits $3bn

I still find myself doing a double-take when the People's Daily Online provides me with good insights. But, it quite often does. And here it goes again with a report on iResearch Inc's latest statistics which suggest that online advertising in China topped Rmb3.13 billion (US$388 million) in 2005. The report suggests that this represents a 77% increase on 2004 figures.

Backing up my theory that print media will never reach critical mass in the B2B sector in China, I note the following sentence in the article: "The business surpasses magazine ads (1.8 billion yuan and is close to radio broadcast ads (3.4 billion yuan)".

I would also note the following section:

It is worth noticing that market proportion of traditional portals led by Sina and Sohu was on decline while research engines by Baidu and Google was on the rise obviously.

Real estate, IT products and online services were ranked the top three sources of clients. Samsung spent the most on online ads, totaling 60.35 million yuan, which was followed by China Mobile and NetEase, 41.1 and 39.13 million yuan respectively.

Asian Aerospace to Hong Kong

Speculation has been rife since we reported back in October that Reed and Singapore had fallen out over Asian Aerospace over where the event would re-appear. Three cities had seemed to be in the running. Well, local newspapers (I'll link to The Standard because it's free) are reporting this morning that Hong Kong has come out the winner.

The event will kick off at AsiaWorld-Expo in September next year although, it would appear, without a military component. Discussions are reportedly still under way with neighbouring Zhuhai (site of an existing, major China air show) for that.

Presumably Hong Kong's capacity to straddle a China position and an Asian regional role saw it win out over rivals Shanghai and Bangkok.

Now the gloves will come off as Reed goes all out to convince exhibitors in Singapore next week (at the final Asian Aerospace there) that the 'real' show is the new one in Hong Kong and not the upstart Changi International Airshow launched by its former show manager Jimmy Lau and various Singapore aviation industry interests.