Day 1 Edition - 2018 Edition

NEWS New products from

NEWS New products from B&O reflect consumers’ desire for freedom Steve Leon Media Operations and Business Partnerships, ShowStoppers SHOWSTOPPERS YOUR CHANCE TO MEET THE MEDIA ShowStoppers is an annual invitationonly media reception designed to enable companies to meet face-to-face with journalists away from show floor. The media come to ShowStoppers to see the latest technologies, products and services displayed on stands in an informal atmosphere. Products and concepts on show include devices, tools, apps and software in fields including: air and noise pollution; high-speed connectivity at home; audio; wearables and mobile products for automotive, fitness and outdoor; IoT ecosystems; AR/VR; 3D printers; immersion cookers; smartwatches; lighting; neighbourhood and home security; sleep robots; cases for smartphones, tablets and laptops; SSDs; smart mirrors; service robots; solar energy products; and more. This year’s ShowStoppers event at IFA took place in the evening of August 30. You will be able to read about some of the key innovations from the event in tomorrow's Weekend edition There were several new products revealed at Bang & Olufsen’s IFA press conference on Wednesday: a range of conical aluminium smart speakers called Beosound, representing the Danish audio brand’s move into voice control via an official partnership with Google Assistant; and a new range of wireless earphones – Beoplay E6 – embodying the company’s message ‘Music goes wherever you go’. This consumer desire for freedom was a theme of both the event and the products. “Our customers seek freedom,” Heidi Hausted Fredberg, product manager, B&O, said. “And they should be free to choose from all the different ways, and places, they want to access and interact with their music.” Fredberg was particularly proud to reveal the centrepiece of the press conference, a world premiere for IFA 2018: the Beosound Edge. The new wireless speaker’s upright circular design, inspired by the old British pound coin – and recalling wall-mounted traditional railway platform clocks – is the work of renowned designer Michael Anastassiades, working with B&O for the first time. “It is a statement product – designed to blend in by standing out,” Fredberg said. Among its Acer goes lighter, thinner, stronger Company CEO Chen unveils new VR and gaming products Underlining the unstoppable momentum of virtual reality, Acer CEO Jason Chen opened the company’s key IFA media showcase on Wednesday by profiling the next-generation StarVR One headset. Acer’s mission, he said, was to break the barrier between people and technology. “The theme of today is to minimise the user’s effort and maximise the value and experience,” he explained. To that end, the new headset would provide new levels of immersive reality, with an industry-leading 210-degree field of view and integrated eye-tracking. Joining Chen on stage, Emmanuel Marquez, CTO of StarVR Corporation, a joint venture between Acer and Starbreeze, said the StarVR One was capable of producing impressive nearhuman levels of image resolution and range of vision. Chen also unveiled Acer’s new all-in-one desktop, the Aspire Z24 with its virtually borderless screen. The system is designed for enhanced interactivity with an advanced four microphone array to accept and understand users’ voice commands, even via poor quality phone lines. Thinner, stronger, lighter and more powerful were the watchwords for Acer’s new notebook additions, from the multipurpose Aspire 3 notebook, through the practical Aspire 5, to the top-of-the-line Aspire 7, aimed at prosumers, designers, and content creators. innovative features – including the world’s first Active Bass Port and a light-up aluminium preview touch-screen – perhaps the most ingenious gimmick is this: volume levels can be adjusted by rolling the entire unit forwards or backwards, smartly referencing retro analogue control knobs Jason Chen CEO, Acer Heidi Hausted Fredberg Product Manager, Bang & Olufsen Hall 1.2 Stand 218 One of the stars of the show was the Swift 5, billed as the world’s lightest 15” notebook. It weighs in at a mere 990g, ideal, said Chen, for people like him, who need ultra-portable computing power wherever they go in the world. For gamers, Chen announced new products in its expanding Predator and Nitro gaming portfolio including four new gaming monitors and a nextlevel gaming chair, the Predator Thronos. The Thronos’s 1.5 metre steel cabin is built around an ergonomic, vibrating chair and an overhead brace supports supports three 27-inch gaming monitors Hall 12 Stand 108 www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Friday 31 st August 2018 15