Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. said Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs won’t deliver the keynote at Macworld Expo and that the company will no longer participate in the show after next month’s event. The shares fell in late trading.

Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, will give the opening address at the conference on Jan. 6 in San Francisco, Apple said today in a statement.

Jobs, who returned as CEO of Apple in 1997, has given the keynote speech at the previous 11 Macworlds, using the gathering of Apple fans to introduce products such as the iPhone and MacBook Air. A no-show by Apple’s CEO may mean the company has no major new products to talk about or that Jobs is unwell, said Jim Grossman, an analyst at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.

“The knee-jerk response from Apple watchers is that there’s nothing worth Steve being there for,” said Grossman, whose Appleton, Wisconsin-based firm owns Apple shares. “Then there’s the conspiracy theories that there are political problems between Apple and the people who hold the conference, or that Steve isn’t feeling up to it. I would prefer them to be more forthright in their strategy, so as an investor I don’t have to worry about which it is.”

Jobs’s health was the subject of speculation this year after he appeared visibly thinner at several company events starting in June. Jobs, 53, had successful surgery four years ago to treat pancreatic cancer.

Scaling Back

Apple said trade shows have become a minor part of how the company reaches customers and that it has steadily scaled back the events. IDG World Expo, based in Framingham, Massachusetts, has hosted Macworld for 25 years. Apple holds its own event, a conference for Macintosh computer developers, each June.

“It doesn’t make sense for us to make a major commitment to a trade show we will no longer be attending,” said Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman. When asked whether Jobs’s health was a factor in the decision, Dowling would only say Schiller is speaking because it’s the last Macworld Apple will attend.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, fell $2.67, or 2.8 percent, to $92.76 in extended trading after closing at $95.43 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares have lost 52 percent this year.

“It’s totally unexpected,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. in Minneapolis. “It’s insignificant that they’re backing out of Macworld, but it’s significant that Steve Jobs isn’t giving the final keynote.”

Private Matter

Jobs told members of Apple’s board in July that he is cancer-free and was dealing with nutritional problems after his cancer surgery, the New York Times reported at the time, citing people close to Jobs. The company has declined to comment on Jobs’s health, saying it is a private matter.

“I’m more concerned about him not doing the keynote than this being the last year at Macworld,” said Chuck Jones, an analyst with Atlantic Trust Private Wealth Management in San Francisco, which owns Apple’s shares. “Him not being there is a concern.”

Jobs, who shows up in jeans and black turtlenecks and dominates Apple’s events, has increasingly turned over the stage to his lieutenants. In October, when Apple unveiled new versions of the MacBook notebooks, he shared the podium with Chief Operating Officer Timothy Cook, considered the No. 2 executive at Apple, and chief product designer Jonathan Ive.

“We are obviously disappointed by Apple’s decision not to participate in Macworld 2010,” Paul Kent, vice present of the Macworld Conference & Expo, said in an e-mailed statement. Kent declined to comment beyond the statement.

“You’d think he would want to do the last show for posterity,” said Rob Enderle, president of the research firm Enderle Group in San Jose, California. “The fact it isn’t him suggests a problem of some kind.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Connie Guglielmo in San Francisco at cguglielmo1@bloomberg.net; Ian King in San Francisco at ianking@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 16, 2008 19:41 EST