Will exhibitions survive as a business model?

Booths full of exhibitions, corridors filled with people distributing leaflets, packed up cloakrooms, and the beeps of passes being scanned at the entrance of the hall – these are the familiar sights and sounds of business conventions.

Is the market to blame for this?

One analyst suggests that the Internet revolutionised not only the market, but people’s minds as well – it broke down barriers to communication and made it easier than it ever has been. This innovation made attending brick-and-mortar conventions more of a serious commitment. Additionally, he mentions the cost of participation - booths, transportation, travel expenses - as deterrents to attending trade fairs in the present day. “The last ten years have seen evolution upon evolution,” he says. “But that’s all done now, and there are just not that many new releases anymore. Does that mean that trade fairs have lost their shine?”

However, in another article of his, “Alexa’s Smart Home,” we find that all the makings of a “smart home war” with Amazon’s launch of the Nokia on the Comeback?

With Samsung launching new instalments of its flagship Galaxy line, Apple releasing a new iPhone on an annual basis, and Chinese vendors taking increasingly bigger shares of the smartphone market, it’s seemingly impossible for Nokia to, as Paul Briden says, “return to the smartphone space.”