Product Trends Hama:
Product Trends Hama: “The Smart Solution” The Fourth Dimension Sharp burst out of the corner this year with their Quattron technology, adding a yellow pixel to the traditional RGB TV technology. Here, Martin Beckmann, PR Director, explains why, and outlines Sharp’s new TV line-up. Founded just about the same time as the IFA show, back in 1923, in the German city of Dresden, over the years, Hama became known as a leading photo accessory company. In more recent times however, Hama has become renowned as a top line consumer electronics accessory company… with a range of products spanning a wide number of categories, embracing new technologies and markets. From Apple accessories, camera bags, digital picture frames, MP3 gear Hama will be showing several new products this year, products that are perhaps not as big as a TV, but electronics accessories designed to make the consumer’s life better. Karl Schabert, Team Leader of accessories manufacturing explains: “We have several products such as our new power supply AC adapter which is the smallest and also universal, which can be used for notebooks. We have a new car charger that has two USB slots which lets you charge more devices. Our new digital photo frames comes with a photo scanner and you can scan your printed photos to display on the device. All the products will be available late August.” Hall 10.2 Stand 101 Our new Quattron line-up this year is very interesting because we are added a new fourth pixel, yellow. This not gives a more natural picture, but the new pixel structure allows the screens to be more energy efficient. It was a technological challenge… and we are the only ones to do this. Since we debuted the technology in Europe a few weeks ago, we have been seeing positive feedback in the press and from the dealers. We understand that it is not so easy to explain the differences between a conventional HDTV and a Quattron HD TV, so we think the best way is for people to see the TV up-close so they can see the results. For our other products, we will show the world’s first Quattron 3D HD TV, because the benefits that Quattron brings are perfectly suited for 3D. Why? Because the active shutter glasses used for 3D, and the filtering of the images, makes the picture a lot “dimmer” in general, meaning the TV has to have much more potential brightness. The new technologies employed in our Quattron TVs enables this higher brightness, making the images vivid and enjoyable. Our message to the retailers is that picture quality is important and seeing is believing. They need to come take a look at the Quattron line and see how the fourth pixel makes all the difference! IFA is getting more important than ever because it is not only a consumer show, but a dealer show where they place their orders. Hall 18 Stand 102 Sonos is a wireless music system for the house which has zones that can be controlled room by room. Fiede Schillmoeller, PR Manager Europe, explains the new innovations Sonos is bringing to the market this year. At IFA, we will have our new controller for the iPad, which will let you control your music from your iPad all over your house. It will be available free starting in late September. We will also be showcasing our F5 product which is the all in one Zone Player, but we also have the Zoneplayer 90 and 120, which widens the number of rooms to play your music. And they all show up on your controller, which can either be the iPad, iPhone, and Controller. IFA is our biggest show worldwide and it’s a great way to interact with our dealers and consumers and we’re even bigger this year. Our message to the trade is that we support our dealers wherever they are and that we have a product that people are looking for, a stereo 2.0 if you will. Dealers can be very successful by having our product in their line-up. Hall 1.2 Stand 130 Music, Music, Everywhere! 24
Product Trends Navigon - Leading the way with Design Thiemo Weinschenk, Senior Product Manager, explains the new design features in the Navigon products and how Navigon continues to innovate. avigon will have new 40 and 70 series. We also have a new classification concept, the Easy, Plus, and Premium products. The star of IFA will be Navigon 70 Premium Live with a 5-inch display, integrated GPS Live module, Bluetooth, 3D maps. It will also have a “Fuel Live” feature, which shows all the service stations around the current location. It also shows the price for each station and which one is the cheapest. With “Events Live,” you can search for events in any city during a certain time period. One of our biggest trends is 3D and we have a 3D package which lets the consumers have a clear landmark view and our City View 3D allows us to show the buildings more realistically. Navigon’s clearest strength is the design factor, which is very important, especially in our Live range. Another thing is our innovations, for example our motion sensor. When you move towards the device, and NAVIGON POIs and the Options menu are automatically revealed, making it truly hands free. IFA is the most important fair for us because it’s very big and we come in contact with a lot of journalists to show our designs. Hall 9 Stand 203 “Taking You There”… Becker Christine Riedlinger - Product manager Medion - Expanding Channels and Adding Product Marketing Value Known as one of the strongest companies when it comes to developing new channels and supporting retailers and manufacturers in one-off sales campaigns, more and more specialist retailers are starting to use Medion’s services. We asked Yvonne Metje - Product Manager, to tell us about the new products Medion will be showing… We will be showcasing many new mobile products. For example, we have three new notebooks in our design line with the Intel core I-processor. The 17.3-inch model has nice features such as the NVIDIA Optimus technology, which means you can change graphics in order to save energy when needed. You can expand your HDD capacity as you like, because there is a second slot for that. You have HDMI and display ports for all multimedia options. We are also showing our new eBook reader that we will be launching October. It has a slimmer design and a 6-inch touch display. We will also have our new Tablet PC along with our content portal. Our new gaming PC features world class NVIDIA graphics and an 80GB SSB drive, with 2 TB of HDD capacity. Hall 8.2 Stand 103 “We will be showing our interactive Marco Polo City Guide which has 30 new guides for different cities in Europe and we implemented it from the Z112 to our new product range, the Becker 217. Thanks to Marco Polo, users can take their own multimedia tour of destinations in the categories of Sightseeing, Museums, Food & Drink, Shopping, In the Evening, Art & Culture, Accommodation and Exhibitions & Transport, with detailed descriptions, pictures and contact information. When you select “Top Highlights”, you get an automatic list of the top spots in any major European city, which then gives you an address and a photo. We will be unveiling three new products at IFA, so don’t miss our booth!” Meet the Falk Team “The people behind the Marco Polo Guides”, Falk Content & Internet Solutions (Falk CIS) are based near Stuttgart in Germany. They develop a wide range of custom-made geoinformation services and operate leading European mobility portals such as falk. de and gofalk.com. Falk is releasing its new version 1.5 of the Falk Navigator for the iPhone 3G and 3GS in the App Store. Falk also manufacture their own devices, which will be on show this year at IFA. Hall 9 Stand 200 www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Monday, 30 th August 2010 25
