One CTIA show for BlackBerrys, another for iPhones

CTIA is rebranding its fall show focused on mobile data technology and applications. Instead of CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment, the show will now be called CTIA Enterprise & Applications. The change may seem like the substitution of like terms, but CTIA officials said it is a significant refocusing of the show’s content, delving much more into mobile’s impact on business and the expansion of that market beyond mere enterprise "IT" to encompass verticals as diverse as health care and transportation.

CTIA has been shopping around for a new name and position for IT & Entertainment for some time (our suggestion: Wireless Work and Play), as attendance for the October event has fallen off and CTIA’s main spring show has become increasingly data focused, obviating the need for a separate mobile data or Internet tradeshow. Rather than creating separation between the two events by focusing the fall show on technological or development topics, CTIA seems to have completely realigned both events. By targeting the fall show at enterprise and new emerging business technologies like machine-to-machine communications and cloud computing, CTIA is presumably making the spring event a consumer-services-oriented tradeshow — CTIA BlackBerry versus CTIA iPhone.

Regardless in the changes in the shows’ directions, CTIA is still coping with the changes in the industry at large, as wireless becomes a much more inclusive business. The lobbying and policy arm of U.S. mobile operators, CTIA has put on shows that have traditionally focused on the operators themselves, with the Big Four dominating the keynotes and traditional wireless infrastructure and application vendors crowding the show floor. But as mobile data has shifted from business models that saw operators offer most services in applications to more open models where outside Internet companies and developers provide the majority of the services, the industry has become far more spread out.

New consumer electronics entrants such as Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) now play huge roles in driving new devices in data business models, while Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) not only is extending its advertising and application platforms to mobile, it has gotten into the device operating system business, as well. Applications were once the exclusive domain of network operators, but with the rise of more open platforms and new app stores, the development community is expanding far beyond a small set of wireless developers and big-iron application companies to include the entire Internet realm. But those developers are also much further removed from the operators whose networks will ultimately support their applications. Consumer electronics and Internet trade shows and developer events now all vie for the wireless event dollar along with CTIA. Many, Apple being the most notorious, host their own events, eschewing other tradeshows.

CTIA has been making efforts to branch out, changing the programming of its events to reflect the broader market. At CTIA’s sprint show, the event organizers looked outside of the traditional wireless industry for speakers, bringing in keynote panelists as diverse as filmmaker James Cameron and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. In the past, Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Facebook have been featured, but despite those nods to the Internet industry at large, CTIA has kept the show’s format centered on its core carrier audience.