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CeBIT 2007
By John Latta, WAVE 0707 4/13/07

March 14 – 20, 2007
Hannover, Germany

We were amazed – at 9am we entered one of the main halls, 2, when CeBIT opened. It was nearly empty. At least two of the large halls, 27 and 10, are closed and some are not being fully occupied, including Hall 1. The empty area has been carefully draped off. The PC halls, such as 22, 23, and 24 are migrating more to PC gaming and less to the technology and broader PC use. Hall 23 had a small area for digital imaging. Even the halls on business software, such as 3, 4 and 5, were less occupied but seemed busy. It also appears that companies are dropping out. Noticeable by its absence is Sony. In the past it had a massive booth but only the cell phone side with Sony Ericsson is present.

This continues a trend seen last year. The show is shrinking while at the same time trying to establish a new identity. This includes attempting to add exhibits on technology in the home, consumer electronics and PC gaming. But this has not gone over well in that IFA is the German CE show and Photokina the imaging show. It is very hard to change the identity of a show, especially when competing with other very large events.

A central problem is that the days of massive events have seemed to pass. Everyone knows the bad days of Comdex when it was so large that everyone hated it. E3, as a spin off of CES, sought to be targeted but it became too large and expensive to be effective. CeBIT is trying to propagate its franchise around the world with only limited success. The problem with CeBIT is that a massive exhibition complex has been built around it. It seems that no other events can come close to supporting such a venue. Maybe it is time to start Worlds Fairs again?

Logitech Lays out its Future

Logitech does not have many news conferences and the one at CeBIT is a must attend if one is to calibrate the company directions. Rather than Guerrino De Luca, President and CEO, the S VP, Gerald Quindlen give the presentation. De Luca was in the audience. Gerald’s talk was smooth, obviously well practiced. Here are key points.

     The company excels in financial performance. Again they
     reported 4 consecutive quarters of double digit sales growth
     which results in 33 consecutive quarters of such growth. A
     truly significant accomplishment given the volatility of the
     PC and consumer markets. This all happened when the company
     passed the $2b sales level.

     Just as significant was the cash generated by the company.
     They reported $213m in cash for FY07. This will allow the
     company to make significant investments in R&D and to
     acquire companies.

     The company regards it financial success, in part, based on
     the portfolio model. This is a range of products not focused
     on a particular segment that helps the company avoid the up
     and down cycles in one segment of the industry. Increasingly
     the company is relying on products not dependent on the PC.

     The G-Series gaming line was cited as a set of products
     which raised the bar of user experience and responded to
     user feedback. Highlighted is the G11 Keyboard which was in
     direct response to feedback from gamers on the G15 keyboard.

     A new line of PS3 peripherals was announced including a
     cordless keyboard and two gaming pads. The ChillStream
     gaming pad has a built in fan to cool sweaty hands of the
     gamers during play.

     Logitech takes pride in its Advanced PC Peripherals which it
     feels are at the top end of any peripherals made. This
     includes the MX Revolution mouse, VX Revolution Mouse, Z-10
     speakers, diNovo Edge keyboard and the Alto Notebook Stand.
     Particular attention was paid to the notebook stand.

     Two new web cams were announced: QuickCam for Notebooks
     Deluxe and QuickCam for Notebooks. With these cameras will
     come with Fun Filters which changes the look of the video
     images to be more artistic. Along these lines the Video
     Effects filters which will work with all the web cams has
     proven to be very popular. This includes avatars and face
     accessories. There have been over 12 million downloads and
     were more popular the Logitech expected.

     Logitech will continue to be a leader in VoIP including its
     Skype cordless phone.

     A key element of its success in this space is the
     collaboration between Logitech and the leaders in services.
     Cited were Skype, MSN and YouTube. It was stated that many
     of the 65,000 daily downloads to YouTube are coming from
     Logitech cameras.

     This has been a banner year of Logitech in audio. Our mm50
     iPod speakers have sold better than any other speaker of the
     company.

     Harmony continues to evolve. On our web site there are
     control codes for 175,000 devices and this continues to grow
     with the support of our users. The Harmony 1000 allows us to
     go into new markets.

     We are targeting our PC products to enhance the Windows
     Vista experience. A demonstration was given on how the MX
     Revolution mouse can be used on Vista to significantly
     improve productivity in document scanning, searching and
     photo handling.

     Increasingly we are seeing the need to bring a new form of
     navigation which goes beyond the mouse. This is 3D
     navigation and Logitech is bringing this to the consumer
     market with the SpaceNavigator. A demonstration was given on
     the SpaceNavigator with Google Earth. This navigator changes
     the Google Earth experience and makes “Google Earth
     addictive.”

     Logitech is making a major move into the home with digital
     music. This is driven by the acquisition of Slim Devices.
     This company has the Squeezebox and the Transporter. The
     former CEO of Slim Devices gave a demo of Squeezebox. Showed
     was Internet radio and a song play service which has 3m
     songs online for use at only $10/month. Squeezebox is on
     sale now and will be Logitech branded and via these channels
     also in May.

     Looking to the future Logitech is focused on 4 megatrends:
     Wireless Connectivity, Digital Music, Internet
     Communications and Digital Home. The products which have
     recently changed the home have not come from the traditional
     CE industry, such as the Apple iPod. This is where Logitech
     wants to be.

     Logitech sees new consumer experiences coming in full home
     control and digital entertainment services.

The WAVE asked that this is close to the Cisco strategy in the home. A logical outgrowth of your existing products is in video conferencing in the home. This is where Cisco has said it will go. What about Logitech?

Response: We are aware of Cisco.

Logitech Announces Two New Webcams

At the news conference Logitech announced the Notebook Deluxe and the QuickCam for Notebooks. These are refinements of existing cameras. Both cameras use the Right Light and Right Sound technologies. This is basically auto exposure and echo cancellation.

The Notebook Deluxe has a 1.3Mp camera with new ID and it has a clip which will open to 20mm to enable attachment to many more display panels. There is also a built in microphone. Attachment to the notebook is via USB. Sales begin in April at 59€.

The QuickCam product is a new version of the product of the same name which has a 1.3Mp sensor. It now has better optics, using glass, for improved picture quality. The clip is also improved. On sale in April for 39€.

Digital Photo Frames

We noted approximately 25 companies with digital photo frames. Most are ODM’s seeking business. Putting an LCD panel in a frame with some memory and a memory card socket is straightforward. Thus, the barriers to entry are small. However, as seen at PMA, Kodak has raised the bar in terms of quality and features. With its brand name the company is likely to set the standard for digital photo frames in 2007. Below is a summary some of what has been seen on the floor. We did not probe deeply with most of these companies. Many did not even have product sheets. They were scouting the hope of business and may not even have serious production, until an order comes in.

Andone Technology Co.

     Limited selection of frames but nice packaging. Sizes from
     5” to 10”. Company in Taiwan.

Compositor

     Digital photo frames with BT and WiFi coming. Panel sizes
     from 5” to 12”.

Cosmos Digitech

     This Chinese company had many frames on display with various
     bezels.

Digital Spectrum Solutions

     Dsicentral.com has frames to 19”. The company described a
     strong linkage to Windows Vista and the wireless connection.
     This frame also includes an audio slide show. They claim to
     be a supplier to WalMart.

Holide Industry

     Its digital frames were in the 7” to 10” range. Company from
     China.

Jlwell and S-R

     A Korean company with multiple names had a number of photo
     frames in the booth under the brand name Phocat. They also
     has MP3 playback in the frame.

Jmtek

     This Chinese company was showing a digital photo cube. It
     will support up to 30 images. The diagonal of the display
     was approximately 1.5”. Cute but not sure how practical.

Kodak

     The prototype frames were shipped from PMA for CeBIT. The
     booth staff was far less knowledgeable about the product
     than those at PMA. All frames ship in May and the bezels
     will not be available until July. Note that Europe is
     different that the US.

Lacor

     Lacorasia.com showed a broad line of frames up to 8”.

Ke Zaing Industrial

     Another Chinese company with a limited selection of frames.

Kinstone

     Kinstone.net had not only digital photo frames but was
     touting a built in Digital TV receiver. This is hardly a
     digital photo frame and more of a television.

ProView

     White and wood bezel frames from 7” to 10”.

Samsung

     These are called Vista photo frames. On display in the booth
     were 7”, 10” and 15”. Only the 7” will go on sale in Europe.
     The distribution of the others will likely be Asia but
     remains undefined when and where else they are sold. The 7”
     frame is available now and costs 179€ without wireless and
     239€ with wireless. The frame does not support CF and has no
     remote control, as does the Kodak frame. There are two USB
     ports, in and out. No support for BT and the bezels are only
     Black or White.

     No service play is defined. Audio cannot be played with
     slide show. Moving pictures are supported.

     The image quality is very good. However, we could not assess
     this directly against, what we consider the benchmark, the
     Kodak picture frames. Thus, side by side comparisons are
     required along with some testing based on panel
     measurements.

Sun Group

     Showing not only digital photo frames but digital
     advertising displays. This is the same company seen at PMA.

Superwiser Holdings

     This Chinese company had a limited display of 7” panels.

Top Bright

     Using the Claire brand the Taiwanese company has frames from
     7” to 19” and with a range of bezels.

Uni-V

     Another Chinese company with digital frames from 5” to 15”.

Ya Horng Electronic

     A new entrant from Malaysia had a few digital photo frames
     in the booth.

From the Floor

Flybook is a small notebook with built in wireless connectivity including a version with  HSDPA – 3.5Mb/s. It is a lifestyle computer with different colors. The company is German. The company is seeking to make the computer a fashion statement, like the iPod. Something that has not caught on yet in the notebook space.

Samsung was showing its Q1 Ultra, a second generation UMPC. The device has a small thumb controlled keypad on both sides of the display. There is a full size keyboard accessory available. The show area illustrated the use of the Q1 next to a steering wheel. We have our doubts this would meet many state laws.

Wow Technology, Korea, had the wowpen, what they called the 2nd generation mouse. This is similar to the vertical hand held mouse seen before. It is now redesigned to fit into the fingers more comfortably. The mouse rests on a surface and stands vertically for the finger grip when used.

Digital Cube of Korea was claiming the smallest UMPC computer. The display is only 4.3” and will run on a battery for 4 hours. Stylist use.

Where is Vista? We saw little buzz on Vista. Some companies, including motherboard makers, had products with Vista associated with them. Overall there will very little showcasing Windows Vista.

Parrot Makes Getting Photos off Cell Phones Easy

The Parrot booth is touting how it is a Bluetooth company – “We put Bluetooth in your life.” One of the products is the Bluetooth Photo Viewer. The sign said it well – From the phone to the frame in one click. The frame has a number of interesting features:

     It can use the following Bluetooth profiles to transfer the
     images: FTP, OPP and BIP.

     One can assign a Bluetooth name to the Photo Viewer.

     There is 512MB of Flash memory for storage. The frame will
     store up to 500 images.

     Images are automatically scaled to the frame size. The frame
     is 720 X 480 pixels with physical dimensions of 10 X 15 cm.

     The backlighting on the frame will adjust to ambient light.

     Images can be transferred from Bluetooth enabled PCs.

The product is available now for 179€.

The image quality was very good.

Buffalo and Linksys Provide Living Room Links

Buffalo was showing the European version of its Link Theater, which they call a Network Media Player. The WAVE had an extended conversation about this product and the market.

     The Link Theater is a media rendering engine to link a
     digital network to a television with both audio and video.
     It is completely controlled over the television with a
     remote control.

     An earlier version had a DVD drive but this was eliminated.
     Now most of our customers use the Link Theater with either
     the LinkStation Live or the TeraStation Live. These two
     products are mass storage units which store the content.

     The Link Theater does not support web surfing. This is just
     best not to do this on a media box like this. Web surfing is
     only satisfactory when all the current browser technology is
     supported. The television as a web device is not optimum and
     if one cannot support tabs, flash and the many customer
     desired technologies it positions the box poorly in the
     market. Let the PC do web surfing.

     These two products, media adapter and storage, together form
     the basis for getting off the PC for media presentation in
     the home. Many of our customers do not have the PC in the
     same location of the televison/display, they do not want the
     PC on all the time and very much like a single experience to
     just play media.

     We originally saw sales of the Link Theater alone then
     rapidly the users would purchase either of the storage
     devices to make the combination of storage and playback and
     integrated unit.

     There a many media experiences which wait to be tuned for
     best user consumption – where is your favorite “YouTube”
     library which can be played on demand, was one example
     cited.

     Given that Link Theater will work with any dlna media
     server. For many this is either the LinkStation Live or the
     TeraStation Live.

     In Europe the output is via SCART while in the US it is
     video component. We see the US product migrating to HDMI
     with support eventually to 1080p.

     In Germany, in particular, is the most sophisticated
     environment, in terms of the users. The German buyers just
     make it work and are quite sophisticated in the access to
     and management of media. Germany does not have as strict
     laws on media protection.

     Many of the leading edge users are avid BitTorrent fans.

     The LinkStation will support some DRM but not the DRM in  
     Vista as the necessary information has not been fully
     disclosed.

     DRM is a necessary evil and the consumers hate it.

In the Linksys booth the recently announced KISS 1600 was being demonstrated. This is a high definition media player which includes a DVD drive. This is different from the Buffalo Link Theater in that this is a DVD player with connection to the home network rather than IT equipment connected to home media output devices. Using either a wired connection or a wireless router digital media content can be sent from many devices to the television. There is no storage in the device and the intent is that this could be added via the USB port. The DVD unit will support upscaling of the video to 720p and is HDMI 1.2 compatible. The KISS 1600 will support one form of video DRM but which one was not available. One connection back to the original KISS before the merger with Cisco is that several online services are supported which include web radio stations, news reports and an on-screen television guide. Some have characterized the KISS 1600 as similar to Apple TV but without the hard drive.

Netgear Shows Two Media Receivers

The EVA700 and EVA8000 are very similar units with the EVA8000 able to support HDMI 1.3 outputs. There is no storage but this could be added via USB (8000) or over the wireless network. The features include:

     Connects to a TV and the home network’

     Streams music, photos, and videos from connected PCs as well  
     as from the Internet;

     Support for a number of video formats, and stream quality is
     up to 1080p HDTV resolution;

     Works with YouTube, Flickr, and BitTorrent content, and can
     display RSS feeds and

     Networked DVR features to stream live TV from PCs with TV
     tuner cards

The user interface is controlled by a remote on the television. A point which Netgear stresses is the ease of navigation across content and its organization into a single media library which the user sees on the screen. There is support for audio, still images, web content such as weather and video. The display supported on the EVA8000 is up to 1080p. There is a unique feature based on software running on a PC Windows client. The screen of the client is then passed to the receiver and shown on the display. The user can interact with the display and there is an on screen keyboard. But Netgear said that users would much rather have a real keyboard for the living room if this is to be practical.

Netgear states it is the only device of this type to play iTunes files. It was stated that both units support DRM protected video content without the need for a PC to be on. To retrieve protected content it is important that the uPnP server be able to reach a license server before the content is played.

The EVA700 costs $349 and the EVA8000 is at $399.

On the Digital Media Adapter Market Space

The WAVE circled between those providing digital media adapters: Linksys, Buffalo and Netgear. Here is a summary of what was articulated.

     Apple with Apple TV could have a major impact on this
     market. It was the consensus that if Apple can open the
     market similar to iPod the overall impact could be very
     positive to all that are seeking a position now. Microsoft
     could well be stimulated into action to open its DRM
     technology so that it can be used on a wide range of devices
     to better compete with Apple. In particular companies would
     like to support Cardea and Janus (DRM) on their Linux
     embedded implementations.

     In one month Linksys will support the Windows Media
     Extender. Linksys claims that it now supports Cardea, Janus,
     Divx and WMA Audio Pro. The KISS 1600 is UPnP but not dlna
     compatible. The later is just additional software.

     Providing a device which extends Internet media into the
     home with CE like functionality is where they believe the
     market will go. Customers just do not want the burden of the
     PC in their home media environment be it the living room,
     den or bedroom. It should be CE media device in the home
     media environments. Microsoft’s media extenders are too
     expensive and need the PC.

     There is clear division on the importance of embedding a
     media playback device into the product. Linksys stands
     behind the DVD but Buffalo and Netgear do not want to supply
     a redundant player. Further, great caution was expressed in
     entering the Blu-ray and HD-DVD wars by making a selection
     in the box. Stay away, let the market choose and keep the
     product priced similar to typical CE devices, was the
     chorus.

     Consumers have already accumulated considerable video
     content on the systems now running. Mass storage is the key
     and the easy of management essential.

     Bringing digital content into the home and having this just
     like one would use Netflix but on my CE devices is a new
     market space. The goal cited in conversations is as simple
     as: select it, buy it, store it, play it and control the
     play all from my television screen. DRM is clearly a major
     barrier and it remains to be seen how much of an impediment
     this will be in the market. Today, in this embryonic market,
     Buffalo, Netgear and Linksys are all surfacing early devices
     to gain market experience and a first mover advantage. They
     see this as is the gateway for them to be a major CE
     company.

     As evident from the specifications of each of the units
     there are significant differences between these products.
     All admitted that the market is moving very quickly and
     product revisions likewise. Support of PC connectivity, user
     interface, DRM and dlna support are just a few of the areas
     to be addressed in the feature race.

Cisco on the Future Living Room

The WAVE was invited to a demo on the Connected Home off the show floor. Cisco showed two items. The interface between the KISS 1600 and a Nokia cell phone and the controller for the KISS 1600 which is motion based.

The Nokia interface was accomplished when a WiFi Nokia phone took a picture and this was transferred to the KISS 1600. Easily done.

The controller is shaped in the form of a loop which the hand grasps. The functions of a mouse are emulated with right, left mouse buttons and scroll wheel. The controller was easy to use especially given that the screen was more 3D like and suitable for a 6’ interaction experience. In fact, it appears that the controller is a redesign of the original Hillcrest Labs Freespace motion control technology, called The Loop. The screen which was present in the Linksys living room demo looked the same as one of those developed by Hillcrest Labs. A press release in November 2006 stated that Hillcrest Labs was now licensing its technology to others.

The message that Cisco was sending is that the scope of its entry into the consumer space goes right to the experience the consumer has on devices in their home. As John Chambers said at CES – Cisco is device or platform agnostic. The demos were to reinforce the point that Cisco seeks to bring a total offering for the many ways that a consumer can use and interact with the digital infrastructure.

It was also stated the more will surface at the Cisco Networkers conference in Anaheim, CA in July 2007.

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Copyright 4th Wave Inc, 2007