Tuesday, June 1, 2004
CeBIT America 2004: Exploring The Show Floor
Posted by Suhit Gupta in "NEWS" @ 01:30 PM
Last year, both Suhit and Janak attended the inaugural CeBIT America event, although Suhit wasn't part of the Thoughts Media team at the time. This year, we had three Thoughts Media team members attend: Suhit from Digital Media Thoughts, and Janak and Kati from Pocket PC Thoughts. Instead of writing two separate articles for the sites, we decided to collaborate, so read on for our take of the expo floor from the Jacob Javits Center in midtown New York.
Figure 1: The Javits foyer, featuring CeBIT's entrance.
Before you read any further, you should definitely check out Suhit's excellent coverage of the press event at the beginning of the week. Suhit enjoyed the event, but was slightly disappointed that the event did not coincide with the launch of any new products, and the lack of presence of Canon or Nikon.
It was therefore with great anticipation that we attended the expo; we're pictured below. We were anticipating a bigger turnout than the inaugural year; in fact, Suhit heard rumors at the press event that exhibitors were turned away due to a lack of space. Kati was in New York (her husband was attending a parallel expo) and decided to join us for the event.
Figure 2: Kati, Janak and Suhit in the lobby of the Javits center.
Unfortunately, our expectations were rapidly dashed; not only was this year's CeBIT smaller than last year's event, but was comparable to last year's TechXNY/PC Expo debacle. Many companies from the press event did not attend, and the number of companies there overall was extremely small -- we toured the show floor in perhaps 3 hours. Perhaps the best event was a meeting with the OQO folks, and we'll detail our experiences playing with an OQO in an upcoming article. In the meantime, here's the highlights from the show floor.
Figures 3, 4: LG's 27" and 30" Flatron LCD TVs.
We visited the LG booth first. They were showing off their LCD monitors, LCD TVs, DVDs and projectors. The LCD monitors they were showing were in the 17" (1280x1024) and 20" (1600x1200) formats. It is clear that they've put a lot of work into making the monitor slimmer, brighter and more vibrant. The lighting at the event was quite bright, but the monitors performed very well nevertheless. However, the most interesting item was the LCD TVs. They displayed their 27" Flatron and 30" Flatron units. The 27" comes with an external Digital Media breakout box with NTSC and other inputs, while the 30" integrates these inputs and throws in a full TV tuner for good measure. Both are in the $2,000 price range, and you can get more information here.
Figure 5: LG's 12x Internal Dual-Layer DVD+/-RW.
LG also showed off their 12x Internal Dual Layer DVD+/-RW, which enables the direct addressing of 8.5GB of data per disc. It is now available for just under $350; unfortunately, the media is scarce at this time. They also have an external model (not pictured here).
Finally, LG has also apparently begun to manufacture projectors under their own brand name. The initial lineup features three units, but none of them struck us as particularly revolutionary.
Figures 7, 8: Korean miniaturized cellphones.
Figures 9, 10: Kubong's webcams.
The next pavilions featured Korean technology; one of the booths showed off very compact GSM cell phones. Fortunately, they're all triband GSM and they're attempting to bring them to market here, so we might see them one day. The second set of pictures shown above were taken at Kubong Information Technology's booth, where they were displaying their miniature (designed to attach to the top of a laptop) and desktop webcams; the latter is lamp shaped, comes with a microphone, speakers and a tiny desk lamp.
Figure 1: The Javits foyer, featuring CeBIT's entrance.
Before you read any further, you should definitely check out Suhit's excellent coverage of the press event at the beginning of the week. Suhit enjoyed the event, but was slightly disappointed that the event did not coincide with the launch of any new products, and the lack of presence of Canon or Nikon.
It was therefore with great anticipation that we attended the expo; we're pictured below. We were anticipating a bigger turnout than the inaugural year; in fact, Suhit heard rumors at the press event that exhibitors were turned away due to a lack of space. Kati was in New York (her husband was attending a parallel expo) and decided to join us for the event.
Figure 2: Kati, Janak and Suhit in the lobby of the Javits center.
Unfortunately, our expectations were rapidly dashed; not only was this year's CeBIT smaller than last year's event, but was comparable to last year's TechXNY/PC Expo debacle. Many companies from the press event did not attend, and the number of companies there overall was extremely small -- we toured the show floor in perhaps 3 hours. Perhaps the best event was a meeting with the OQO folks, and we'll detail our experiences playing with an OQO in an upcoming article. In the meantime, here's the highlights from the show floor.
Figures 3, 4: LG's 27" and 30" Flatron LCD TVs.
We visited the LG booth first. They were showing off their LCD monitors, LCD TVs, DVDs and projectors. The LCD monitors they were showing were in the 17" (1280x1024) and 20" (1600x1200) formats. It is clear that they've put a lot of work into making the monitor slimmer, brighter and more vibrant. The lighting at the event was quite bright, but the monitors performed very well nevertheless. However, the most interesting item was the LCD TVs. They displayed their 27" Flatron and 30" Flatron units. The 27" comes with an external Digital Media breakout box with NTSC and other inputs, while the 30" integrates these inputs and throws in a full TV tuner for good measure. Both are in the $2,000 price range, and you can get more information here.
Figure 5: LG's 12x Internal Dual-Layer DVD+/-RW.
LG also showed off their 12x Internal Dual Layer DVD+/-RW, which enables the direct addressing of 8.5GB of data per disc. It is now available for just under $350; unfortunately, the media is scarce at this time. They also have an external model (not pictured here).
Finally, LG has also apparently begun to manufacture projectors under their own brand name. The initial lineup features three units, but none of them struck us as particularly revolutionary.
Figures 7, 8: Korean miniaturized cellphones.
Figures 9, 10: Kubong's webcams.
The next pavilions featured Korean technology; one of the booths showed off very compact GSM cell phones. Fortunately, they're all triband GSM and they're attempting to bring them to market here, so we might see them one day. The second set of pictures shown above were taken at Kubong Information Technology's booth, where they were displaying their miniature (designed to attach to the top of a laptop) and desktop webcams; the latter is lamp shaped, comes with a microphone, speakers and a tiny desk lamp.
