INFORMATION LIFESTYLE
INFORMATION LIFESTYLE The Next Big Thing Buffalo launches into mass storage for smartphone market “Many people don’t trust putting their precious data on a third party server.” Network Attached Storage – or NAS for short – is becoming increasingly popular in a world where trust and security of data are paramount. IFA International asked Hidetoshi Yamaguchi, Buffalo’s Senior Managing Director and Member of the Board, how he sees the future for NAS. [ Interview by Richard Barnes ] We believe that mass storage devices will play a new role as an external hard drive for the smartphone. Today, the average consumer’s iPhone has 16 or 32 gigabytes of storage, so if they start saving photos, videos or music, it will soon be full. But it’s not possible to attach an external hard drive to a smartphone, so the only way is to connect to a mass storage device via a Wireless LAN in the home or office. This year saw the arrival of a wireless LAN technology known as 802.11ac, and this is a key feature of your products. What does it change for the consumer? As long as the TVs are connected via an Ethernet cable to the Internet, they can stream high definition movies without much problem, but once the consumer connects through a wireless router, he or she will rarely get that smooth playback, even with just one TV connected. As the smart TV market expands, consumers will need a wireless router that can handle that bandwidth, and the 802.11ac technology employed by our AirStation router does that. How important is IFA for you in terms of global marketing for Buffalo? IFA is especially critical for us in terms of consumer products. It is the most important place to display our consumer products to the European market, so we place the highest value on IFA. We want to focus the Buffalo Hidetoshi Yamaguchi Senior Managing Director & member of the board, Buffalo brand on mass storage devices for the general public, the sorts of people who are not very technical, but who need these kinds of products, especially for their smartphones. We aim to provide a complete solution via wireless routers and mass storage devices, to create easy connectivity with smart phones, and that is what we are planning to highlight this year. » HALL 12 / STAND 105 ON THE CLOUD! This easy-to-use two bay CloudStation Pro Duo by Buffalo Technology is part of their personal cloud family. 28
Special Feature Heading for the Cloud Enabling consumers to interact “across their screens” In the past months and years, the speed of “convergence” between CE and IT products has been increasing. One result was that last year, Toshiba brought its CE and IT divisions together under one umbrella. Thomas Teckentrup is responsible for overseeing and implementing Toshiba’s strategy for Cloud and Content Services across EMEA. We asked him to explain the reason behind the merger of the two divisions. [ Interview by Richard Barnes ] It was to provide consumers the ultimate benefits from the digital convergence, it is of increasing importance to have the right business structure in place. Toshiba’s new business structure enables us to combine the best from both worlds into leading product offerings and to bring them to market effectively. Basically, the challenges have not changed for years - it always has been and it still is all about providing the best solutions for improved usability and access to the broadest possible range of quality content and information service offerings. Now, new converged technologies take us into the next level of being able to provide significantly improved answers to those challenges. With the direct connection of our devices into the cloud, we are now able to provide consumers access to a significantly increased breadth of content while disconnecting them “(...) browsing an electronic programme guide on a multi touch user interface of a tablet is an excellent experience (...)” from linear consumption paradigms. While the access to content broadens, the need for more sophisticated concepts for content discovery evolves. We are able to provide consumers access to vastly improved electronic programme guide services as well as to implement social recommendation features which we believe will play an increasingly an important role soon. And, with the new generation of devices and services we enable consumers to interact with devices “across the screens" - using each of the device categories for what it can do best. How do you see Smart TV progressing? What will be the driving factors? The power of Smart TVs is to provide broad access to content and information services. This access will rapidly broaden further. We are working with a large number of partnering companies that will contribute to this. More diversity in premium video content offerings, catch-up TV offerings and access to various premium information services with high relevance to consumers. All this will be driven by an increased availability and advancing maturity of technology standards around smooth integration of cloud services, content delivery and content copy protection. Another important trend is the extensive integration of social features into the new generation of Thomas Teckentrup General Manager, Cloud Services at Toshiba EMEA Smart TVs. This will improve the discovery of relevant contents and simultaneously accelerate the trend of adoption across the social peer groups. For all partners involved, providing services via the cloud into Smart TVs is always linked to substantial investments into the cloud service infrastructure. Hence, the more Smart TVs are out there in the market place, the more a critical mass is building up to justify those investments. The recent rapid growth of the total market’s Smart TV sales supports this. Compared to the previous year, the amount of Smart TVs sold into Western Europe grew more than 500%. Connected TVs now representing more than 35% of all TVs sold. And it looks like a strong and stable trend. new generation of there in the market place, » HALL 21 / STAND 101 Toshiba Exceria Type HD GOOD MEMORIES FROM TOSHIBA Toshiba is expanding its family of Exceria memory cards with new microSD versions. Exceria cards are compliant with the UHS-I Memory Card Standard and the minimum recording speed is compliant with UHS speed class 1 and SD speed class 10. The cards support the capabilities of the latest personal digital equipment, including HD video recording and continuous image shooting with digital cameras. The first microSD Exceria cards to be introduced are the Type HD series, which meet the needs of professional and sports photographers, and are water and X-ray resistant. » HALL 21 / STAND 101 TOSHIBA’S TABLET-CUM-LAPTOP Toshiba introduces the new convertible Ultrabook Satellite U920t. It combines the ease-of-use and performance of a laptop with a tablet’ wake-up responsiveness and usability. The 31.8cm touch screen transforms easily from laptop to tablet mode. The Satellite U920t is positioned as an alternative for users who want a versatile mobile computer in compact form. For content consumption, the convertible Ultrabook can be operated in tablet mode to take advantage of touch support with Windows 8, while for additional tasks which require a lot of typing, the laptop mode is the preferred option. Toshiba Satellite U920 » HALL 21 / STAND 101 IFA International • Monday 3 rd September 2012 29
