With the variety of gadgets on offer at the IFA, it will make staying at home more fun, writes DEREK SCALLYin Berlin
W HAT RECESSION? When Berlin’s IFA, Europe’s largest consumer electronics show, closed its doors yesterday it had not only clocked up an 18 per cent rise in visitors, but had broken last year’s record €3 billion worth of orders.
Now in its 85th year, the grand-daddy of gadget shows has officially saved Christmas for the major electronics companies, with nearly all reporting a revival of business in time for the holiday season.
“We are very happy with the fair, our expectations have been more than fulfilled,’’ said Reinhard Zinkann, head of German electronics industry association ZVEI.
As usual, the show offered a mix of the good, the bad and the utterly bizarre. A singing espresso machine, anyone?
Every IFA has an obvious trend; this year there were two, reheated trends.
The first, impossible to ignore, trend was 3D. Taking people into the third dimension has been the holy grail of the entertainment industry since the 1950s. Then, cardboard glasses-wearing crowds flocked to House of Wax and other schlock until the niche was killed off by complicated projection and a dwindling novelty factor.
Now Japanese rivals Sony and Panasonic have decided that digital 3D is the way of the future. Both presented competing home cinema digital 3D solutions (see interview) and stirred up fears of another format war, just a year after the high-definition DVD battle was settled.
Sony says it will roll out 3D in 2010, from its Bravia televisions to the Playstation console. Panasonic has a similar timeframe, hoping to hook consumers through its December tie-in with James Cameron’s Avatar.
The other buzzword of IFA 2009 was “cocooning”, a seemingly contradictory idea that pops up every few years: in hard economic times, consumers are apparently prepared to spend more money feathering their nest with appliances and gadgets that make staying at home more fun.
“This phenomenon can also be observed in the consumer electronics sector at present,” said German research company GfK, noting rising sales of everything from flat screen televisions to high-end coffee machines.
That trend has now cross-fertilised with growing consumer demand for low-energy appliances. The consumer logic seems to be: if we’re going to stay at home, we want to at least earn back on our electricity bills some of the money we’ve splashed out on the latest toy.
Both Sony and Fujitsu (minus Siemens) displayed so-called “zero watt PCs” that use no energy in stand-by mode.
This was also an IFA of spoiler products. As rumours swirled of a new Apple tablet computer, Toshiba gazumped its Californian rival with the JournE touchscreen multimedia tablet. Just 14mm thick, the device sports an aluminium body and backlit seven-inch screen, runs Windows and serves as a multimedia centre. Hook it up to your television and you can watch HD films, browse photos and even plunder other computers over your home network via WiFi.
At just €250, it can give any competition from Apple a run for its money on price.
Sony got in a late dig at the Macbook Air with the (deep breath) Vaio X-Series ultra-thin carbon-cased laptop. With an 11in screen and half an inch thick at its widest point, it runs the Intel Atom processor for a reported 12hrs on one charge and will go on sale in October for $1,300. Another pretender to the Apple crown was LG: it debuted its iPhone wannabe Etnea mobile phone. Based on Google’s Android operating system, it offers a full slide-out keyboard, 3G support and a 5 megapixel camera.
On the Satnav front, market giant Tomtom unveiled a new “live” service it says will allow journey-planning incorporate live traffic, parking and weather updates. It’s a subscription service powered by Germany’s T-Mobile service, but the company plans to bring it to 20 other European countries. Competitor Garmin unveiled a similar device, tapping in to live information from Google.
Providing some controversy and glamour at the gadget fest was pop star Lady GaGa, in Berlin to promote a line of earphones sporting her name. She was taken aback when a German journalist, citing red carpet pictures from earlier this year, asked if the singer was a hermaphrodite – with both male and female reproductive organs.
‘‘My vagina is offended by this question,’’ said the pop diva, before having security throw the journalist out of the press conference.
