Last: argumentation
Next: on pens
March 27, 2004
cebit
I'd wondered why so little had been written about Cebit this year. It's big enough, there's plenty of exhibitors, quite a few product releases, but after spending a few days there, it was clear that pretty much all the industries there are glad to have weathered the last few years, are taking no chances, and become ever so slightly complacent.
There were no great shakes for mobiles (maybe I'm just too close to them - full disclosure: I've been working with quite a few of these manufacturers). If I wanted a silver flip phone, I'd have bought one already. However, as an open OS phone, the Panasonic X700, running Series 60, is really quite impressive. It's the year of the slide, with many manufacturers taking a lead from the 7650 and the SL55. Swivel is back, again, with Sony Ericsson and Motorola.
Interesting to see the 3G/UMTS phones coming out. Most are still comically huge. Some manufacturers (notably LG and Samsung) who sat out the first round of phones have come through with, well, normal looking devices. I finally got my hands on the Japanese FOMA phones - and they are not small face on, but very thin and very light.
Sanyo and Panasonic were showing concept phones - Sanyo concentrating on mobile TV reception, Panasonic on segments (kids, fashion).
The only different form factor is the ultra-mini, which Panasonic have turned into a complete range of devices.
My killer phone was the Nokia 5140. There just aren't enough rugged phones in the market, and this comes with the added potential of active covers - currently a GPS shell and an RFID reader shell. It was good to be able to try it and take these apart. There's no wires between the shells and the phone; there's a cheeky set of 5 contacts on the naked phone that match up with similar on the shell. My bet would be that this is a serial interface, which means it should be quite easy to hack together other shells. It might even replicate pins on the Pop-port, allowing even easier connection. It's a Series 40 phone, so no Symbian apps, but Java programs have access to this shell interface. The only thing missing on this phone, for most people, is Bluetooth.
I couldn't find anyone at Sony, Nokia or Philips to grill about Near Field Communication (NFC). This is so exciting, a handshake protocol based on similar human actions (physical contact). It has a ragbag of interesting features, including compatibility with many RFID cards, so I would have liked to get a good grounding from some of the people involved. Anyway, you can read a backgrounder, go to the forum, or download the spec itself. One immediate application I can see is an implementation of a folk computing idea: when people meet for the first time, they will often take turns offering the name of someone they know who they think that the other person will know. This continues until a person is recognised, or they run out of people. An electronic aid for this was mocked up at MIT, but a combination of NFC and LOAF will allow something similar.
Cebit is ostensibly a trade show, but it's really kept alive by the German public. All the operators, and some ISPs, have huge stands (or in the case of Vodafone, their own specially constructed pavilion), and the biggest queues are for the phone manufacturers' customer service and repair.
What is interesting is that voice over IP is becoming just something to add on to broadband. Several ISPs or pure-play VoIP operators were busy signing up people to flat rate telephony. There was also the faint rumblings of voice over WLAN for consumers. In fact, VoIP/WLAN could be sold and designed just like cordless phones: a base station that plugs into the wall (in reality an ADSL router and wireless node) and a cordless (wi-fi) handset. Looking further, video over IP (and video over WLAN) are becoming a not-too-distant commercial reality.
Most of the consumer stuff wasn't that interesting - especially from an industrial design angle. I did notice that everything is really getting smaller, the only limits being battery, input and output. I saw it like this:
* everything will be digitized
* once it's digitized, it will be stored and copied
* when it's stored and copied, it will be made wirefree (or mobile)
There were quite a lot of small tablets, from 5 to 10 inches, being used for media playing, data collection, and mobile computing. This seems to be an interesting area for consumer electronics in the next few years. See also Christian Lindholm's writeup.
I don't find consumer electronics that interesting because it's available now. You can look to the OEMs for next year's products, and to the component makers for the year after that, but to feel the vibes over longer periods, you have to look at other markets. I spent a lot of time trawling round the printer manufacturers, the heavy-duty sorting machines, the banking equipment.
I made a beeline for the barcode reader companies. I was interested to see how they're reacting to the threat of cameraphones, and also any thoughts they had about what happens when you turn this technology from business to personal use. The answer was simple: they're blinkered. It doesn't concern them, and it's not something they think about. Phones like the 5140 could decimate the cheaper low-usage end of the machine readable markets - and they have a nice Internet and communications stack thrown in for free.
I spoke to Denso (creators of the 2d QR Code), but they really couldn't see the potential for personal use of barcodes. They did mention, however, that several European operators are trying to agree a standard, so that bar code usage could become as prevalent as in Japan. What was nifty was that all their readers could read bar codes displayed on a mobile screen, which could make ticket and coupon delivery easier.
What else?
I didn't get to see Qrio, or its pirate elf friend. I did see other robot overlords.
Some of the computer technology on display was amazing.
Worst giveaway in practice if not in theory were inflatables - on two stands I saw a queue of people waiting for an inflatable surfboard or lilo to be blown up. Round the corner from the stands were large groups of people trying their hardest to deflate the inflatables. Crazy.
I didn't get to see much of Hannover, and from what I could tell there aren't many major landmarks to see. One feature are lots of red lines on the streets (cycle paths?), that were obviously drawn round any obstacles, by someone who didn't particularly care about their job.
(more photos here)
Trackbacks
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.anti-mega.com/cgi-bin/mt/addmttb.cgi/118
