Whoa, what a bombshell, right? Turns out Apple just announced this year is the last that Apple attends the Macworld show, not only that but Steve Jobs will not be making a personal final appearance at the tradeshow which has in the past hosted so many of his keynotes. Marketing director Phil Schiller will instead be holding the keynote.

What to make of it? Well one would immediately point the finger at Steve Jobs’ health. Apple gave no official comment on whether it was the reason, but spokesman Steve Dowling gave an alternate explanation: he said that since it is Apple’s last year at the venue, it doesn’t make sense to make a major investment in a show that it won’t be attending in the future.

The reason stands a bit shoddy, as Jobs’ Macworld keynote is a good trade-show investment for a company if there ever was one. It usually guarantees headlines in major circulation newspapers and business publications worldwide, and will usually eclipse the announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show oftentimes held in the same week. Apple would have likely benefited more by hyping the last chance to see Steve Jobs appear at Macworld, and thus drawing huge publicity.

It is of course possible that Jobs has delegated Schiller to do the keynote because there simply isn’t much to say. After Apple revamped their notebooks and iPods, and with no new iPhone foreseeable in the near future, we’re not sure what could catch the Macworld public’s eye this year. TBR analyst Ezra Gottheil caused a bit of a stir in predicting a low-cost netbook from Apple, but even he admitted that was pure speculation. That’s unlikely however, considering that Jobs recently said that Apple doesn’t know how to create a $500 PC that lived up to its exacting quality standards.

Apple’s decision does provoke some thought though. The company is worth some $27 billion dollars, and it automatically gets huge global exposure from an event lasting under two hours. If Apple is beginning to think the trade show costs can not be justified, what company can?

Apple on the other hand, as it itself points out has its own way of reaching out to consumers that other companies don’t. It has proved it can hold its own events very well, which is quite useful if, for instance, it ever failed to see eye to eye with Macworld producers IDG, and decided it wanted to fly solo. Adding to that, there are also Apple’s 250 well-located retail stores which see 3.5 million shoppers each week, as well as its online initiatives such as how-to videos and product intros. Maybe Apple decided that they can now afford a measure of independence in handling their own exposure. We’ll see how this works out. Another Steve Jobs blood pressure reading would put us more at ease as well right about now.