You guys must have surely heard of IFA or Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin auf Deutsch which happens every year in Berlin in September. It is infact one of of the oldest tech conferences in Europe and used to be a Radio exhibition long ago. The organisers hold a GPC or Global Press Conference every year and they invited me to the press conference in Lisbon, Portugal few days back and It was indeed a great experience. IFA flew in over 300 journalists from all over the world and literally painted the whole town red in IFA colours.
I got a chance to meet several companies who showed off some cool products at the event and also got to experience a tiny bit of Portuguese culture.
IFA and Messe Berlin announced that they plan to offer more space to brands exhibiting at the show which means we will surely get to see more interesting products. The IFA Global Markets is moving to a dedicated venue in the city to help manufacturers source suppliers for future products. The show also plans to encourage startups, research labs and companies by giving them a plaform called IFA NEXT which is a new initiative.
Sennheiser showed off their all new aural AMBEO headset for the iPhone which can capture audio in 3D and they even gave us one to try out. It is amazing how this piece of technology works. Imagine being able to capture audio as you experience it and then relive the experience in the future.
Sennheiser is working with Samsung to develop a AMBEO headset compatible with Android devices.
Porsche Design showed off their Book One which is a luxury windows laptop and a premium alternative to the Microsoft Surface Book. It has premium written all over it and even the hinge is well designed.
Specs include a 13.3 inch QHD display, intel i7 processing , 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and 14 hour battery life. The book one will cost $2495 and is already shipping in many countries.
Dirror Showed off a smart mirror powered by Windows. The company will launch a larger version Dirror XL at IFA 2017
Samsung showed off their QLED TVS and the all new TVs called The Frame which blend into to your room like a painting. LG has already launched wallpaper TVs but Samsung is taking an interesting approach in the same space.
Philips teased their Sonicare Diamond Clean smart tooth brushes which they would unveil at IFA 2017.
Analysts from GFK & IHS Markit also shared interesting thoughts about the consumer electronics market. Gfk said that over 2.6 Million TVs were sold in India and we spend over 38% of our day consuming content on TV , 33% on a computer and 29% on mobile devices including tablets.With the rising popularity of Voice based assistants like Alexa , we can see more gadgets support such functionality in the coming months.
I got to meet tech journalists and friends from all over the world including Mr.Brown from Singapore, Eric from Phonescoop, Jaime Rivera of PocketNow and folks from Kenya, Ghana, Mauritius, Macedonia and countries I have barely heard of. It was great to get to hear from them about tech and smartphones in their lives.
We just booked our tickets to Berlin yet again and we should be reporting from the show in September 2017. Mark your calendars for IFA2017 as the news starts breaking as early as August 30th even though the show officially begins only on September 1st.