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SCMP Reporter

A stiff challenge for sponsors from competing events in Hong Kong and a lingering economic downturn have threatened to make Asia's largest annual communications trade show into a less significant event than before.

  The 14th Asian International Communications and Information Technology Exhibition and Conference,  also known as CommunicAsia 2002,  opens this week in Singapore without some of the biggest sponsors and exhibitors that it has had in the past two years.

 The conference, which opens today, is expected to attract much attention as industry leaders focus on issues from recent developments in third-generation (3G) and other high-speed, wireless Internet communications projects across the region.

  But the exhibition that starts tomorrow will be smaller than before as event organiser Singapore Exhibition Services  estimated 1,448 exhibitors, 250 fewer than last year, had set up their booths at the sprawling Singapore Expo site near Changi International Airport.

  Communications industry heavyweights Nokia, Cisco Systems, Motorola and Alcatel  will again miss this year's event.

  Alcatel was CommunicAsia's biggest corporate sponsor in 2000.

  Lucent Technologies has returned as an exhibitor after being absent last year.

  The company, however, will set up a more modest booth compared with the one it had in 2000, the largest indoor exhibition built at the time in Singapore.

  Nokia, for the second consecutive year, will hold its own conference and exhibition outside of CommunicAsia.

  A company spokeswoman said: ''Last year, we saw Nokia Connection bring more focused media and marketing mileage for the company than it could have generated as part of CommunicAsia. We expect the same results this year.''

  Despite the reduced exhibitor space, CommunicAsia is expected to attract the same number of visitors  about 38,000  it recorded last year.

  The biggest problem for CommunicAsia has been  overcoming the growing challenge for corporate sponsorship from the annual 3G World Conference in Hong Kong and from the return of a regional conference and exhibition  to Hong Kong that is backed by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

The 3G World Congress, which is regularly staged a week before CommunicAsia, centred its conference and exhibits to the same key industry issues and applications covered by the popular wireless programme of the Singapore event.

  A senior official from a large wireless gear-maker, declining to be named, said the company needed to be prudent in spending its marketing dollars because of the sluggish world market for information technology products.

  He noted, however, that the congress' focus on 3G technologies based on the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) standard  allowed the company and others like it to play up products designed for CDMA network operators in Asia.

  He expected his company and other leading communications firms to spend more marketing dollars and generate plenty of attention at the ITU Telecom Asia  event in Hong Kong.

  The Geneva-based ITU, an international body that fosters standards for communications equipment and systems, decided to hold its regional event again in Hong Kong after the  territory's successful turn at hosting the event in December 2000.

  That previous ITU event was the group's biggest-ever regional event as it attracted over 50,000 participants, 500 exhibitors, 679 senior government and industry officials and 810 journalists.

  The exhibition space comprised 27,896 square metres, including upper floors, and there were a total of 1,193 participants who attended the forum sessions.

  Events prior to the Hong Kong-staged ITU Telecom Asia took place in Singapore in 1985, 1989, 1993 and 1997. The ITU Asia event in  Hong Kong will be the 25th ITU-backed event since the body started these forums in Geneva in 1971.

  Regional ITU Telecom events were introduced in 1985 to address specific concerns of individual regions.

  Shaun Goh,  executive director for communications and engineering events at Singapore Exhibition Services,  said that businesses in the region were more careful where they invested because of the challenging economic landscape.

  He said CommunicAsia 2002 aimed to help these companies address those problems directly and stay ahead of their competition by bringing together the relevant technologies, products and services at the forum.

  ''CommunicAsia 2002 is well-timed to ride on an expected rebound of the region's information communications market,'' he said. 

 He said that an economic recovery was expected during the second half of this year.
 



CommunicAsia loses lustre