MARKET & TECHNOLOGY
MARKET & TECHNOLOGY TRENDS The World is Not Flat... But it Will Be Soon! “...up till now everybody's been talking about full HD sets and 100 Hz sets, but nobody has had both at the same time...” When it comes to looking at trends world-wide but also the trends here at the IFA show, Bob Raikes from Meko in the UK has been in the game for many years. IFA INTERNATIONAL asked Mr Raikes what he has found to be the most interesting advances at the show. One of the problems with being a display analyst these days is that it's very hard to get excited because there are so many great displays, the technologies you look at are all really good and it's hard to be knocked out. But there are some really interesting things, particularly an inflection point has kind of changed: up till now everybody's been talking about full HD sets and 100 Hz sets, but nobody has had both at the same time. You could buy a one 100 HZ set which gave you very good motion on an LCD and made it look more like a plasma for moving things, or you could have full HD. But you could not have both at the same time. The technology has just arrived for IFA, it is pretty well everywhere and the LCDs are looking really good. LCD technology has now evolved to a point where we have full HD 100Hz, and very good response times in general. The companies seem to be turning now a lot more towards design, lifestyles and this sort of things to market the products… Absolutely, there are only a handful of people who are making the LCD panels for everybody so it's very hard if you are buying them and making them into a TV to make the picture really different. In the days of CRT TV's, all the major TV brands had their own CRT factories and their unique technology. Now they're having to buy panels wherever they can. So they are focusing much more on TV as furniture. There is a phrase that is often used in the industry, the “wife acceptance factor”. What this means is that a TV purchase is not just a technology purchase, it's a piece of furniture that has to look good when it switched off as well as switched on, it says something about who you are, what you are and how you feel about your life. The kind and brand of the TV you have in your home is important. The big brands are concentrating on styling and features that make it look nice. Other things we've seen here in Europe for the first time is 3D TV courtesy of DLP. This is something that's actually going to market now in the United States… Yes, there are going to be eighteen or twenty sets by the end of the year from Mitsubishi and Samsung in the US retail that are capable of showing 3D. Whether there is actually going to be 3D content for them to show is quite a different concept. I was at a very interesting conference on Wednesday just before the IFA on 3D, and the talk there was on the classic chicken and egg situation: if you want to sell more 3D sets, you have to have more 3D content, but you don’t make 3D content unless there are 3D sets. And that's very much like the problem for HD: HD sets are everywhere but very few people in Europe are watching in HD. I'm lucky because I'm in the UK and I can get SKY with great HD picture. But for many people in Europe you've got fantastic technology now but they haven't got the signal and the content to really make the most of their great TV sets. Meko has been doing a lot of studies recently into the market trends, and there is no doubt that over the next couple of days we will be hearing some more results of these studies. Is there anything in particular you can say about the European markets, the TV market that is different to the U.S. market? Absolutely, there has been astonishing news just this week: the US analyst Display Search has said that Vizio were the number one brand in the U.S. for selling through stores in Q2. And Visio is a brand that is less than three years old, it is Taiwanese owned and it’s knocked Samsung off the top spot, while Sony is now in third position. Fourth and fifth positions are also now down to new brands. This is really astonishing! The European TV market is very stable, very much built around the premium prestige brands, Sony, Samsung, Lge, Panasonic, Toshiba and so on… They’re names we have known for years in TV, but the U.S. has seen a really radical change. U.S. consumers love to buy from warehouse channels where LCD TVs are very easy to buy and take home. They are very low cost through these channels and U.S. consumers are always driven by low prices. So they've really gone heavily for these new low cost LCD TV sets, it's causing a big headache for the major brands and they're all looking over their shoulders now at whether it will happen in Europe. I have to say Europe is always more complicated, more difficult, each country has a different market so it's very difficult. Visio was able to get a lot of volume very quickly by selling to one or two key retailers. You really can’t do that in Europe on a big scale. You can do it in any one country in Europe, but you can’t do it across the whole continent. So we will see people trying to do that from the U.S. example, it's going to be interesting and exciting. 6 IFA International • Monday, 3 rd September 2007
MARKET & TECHNOLOGY TRENDS Digital Still Camera Market The SLR Sweet Spot and Rising Megapixels… Tracking the Trends Panasonic, with its Lumix Camera range, has become a stalwart in the digital camera business with a very broad range of solutions. We spoke to Mamoru Yoshida, the DSC Business Unit executive about what he sees as being the strongest trends in the sector… The biggest trend I see is the increase of the “repeat purchaser.” This type of consumers have already experienced using digital cameras and want to upgrade to higher added value cameras such as D-SLR cameras. It is for this reason that the D-SLR segment is rapidly increasing and it is in this segment that we aim to participate more in the future. The number of megapixels in cameras has been rising across the board, but often people don’t look at optics and electronics... What are the most important things to consider today when buying a basic digital camera and a digital SLR camera? Optics is a very important part of the product. This is why all of our cameras are equipped with Leica lens to give the best picture quality. Our D-SLR camera is also equipped with Leica lens and Mega O.I.S which stops blur effectively. They are also important to improve the ease of use in our cameras. What is changing in the way people use cameras today? Users now expect good results with their cameras in all kinds of shooting conditions. They want to have the freedom to be creative without having to think how to handle the cameras. That is why we have to provide intelligent technology in our Lumix cameras to fulfill the high demand from consumers. Panasonic is sponsoring a very exciting project with Unesco covering World Heritage sites... Could you please tell us about this project? Panasonic is proud to be involved in supporting “Our Place” - The World’s Heritage project that will create the largest photographic collection of Unesco World Heritage Sites ever. We want to help contribute to photographic culture, as well as promote and protect the important Unesco World Heritage sites through the Our Place Project. The Panasonic supported project will eventually have an international team of 20 photographers, who will be photographing a large number of the 830 World Heritage Sites situated in 138 countries around the globe. The team will exclusively use the Panasonic Lumix range of digital cameras, including the Digital SLR, DMC-L1. What trends will emerge at IFA? We believe many companies will be displaying new D-SLR cameras as well as digital still cameras with an increasing number of megapixels. For Panasonic, we will be displaying more intelligent cameras with 28mm wide angle lens. In order to realize to our vision “Creating a new photo culture in digital era”, we keep proposing uniqueness based on the black box technologies. And also we will expand digital AV networking capabilities which will be the next market trends. Hall 5.2 a/b IFA International • Monday, 3 rd September 2007 7
