Glimpse of tomorrow's tech - ResearchInChina
Date:2007-07-13
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THE consumer electronics sector is one area which showcases the latest technologies that can be used daily in China in the near future.
Many traditional IT giants aim to penetrate the high-margin business, and home-appliance producers have put state-of-the-art technologies in TV and air-conditioners, for example, to make them intelligent.
What are the latest technologies in the sector? People were able to view the offerings at the China International Consumer Electronic Show in Qingdao, Shandong Province, which ended on Monday. The show was the country's biggest CE expo.
"The Chinese CE market is expected to grow to nearly US$100 billion by 2009 (compared with US$50 billion in 2004). The major manufacturers' increasing innovation have fueled the explosive growth,"said Gary Shapiro, chief executive and president of CEA (Consumer Electronics Association), which operates the world's biggest CE show.
Technologies covering broadband, sense and biotech have huge opportunities, Shapiro said.
More than 430 exhibitors, including Hewlett-Packard, Intel, NEC, Changhong (stock code: 600839), Haier (stock code: 600690) and Hisense (stock code:600060), attended the show, which covers 37,000 square meters.a
Digital home
Hisense launched its latest digital home system called "DNet-Home", which consists of a media center, a network set-top box, Web-linked air-conditioners and refrigerators, intelligent monitoring and remote medical system.
The media center, which is connected to the Internet, operates the home appliances through various methods, including Wi-Fi, IGRS (Intelligent Grouping and Resource Sharing) and ZigBee, a low-power and high-security wireless standard.
"People needn't use so many remote controls in the digital home. Instead, a handset or laptop can be the controllers even when users are out of their homes," said Guo Qingcun, Hisense's vice president.
Hisense's system has been used in some high-end apartments in Qingdao, said Guo.
High-quality video and audio systems
Sony, LG, Haier, Hisense and Panasonic, among other TV makers, all displayed their high-definition flat panel TVs in their booths.
"The popularity of LCD and plasma fuel the demand of high-definition but TV programs currently are far below the HD standard," said Ye Ping, an analyst at market researcher Sino.
NEC Electronics Corp launched a chipset called "Emma2", which supports the ability to project four, nine, 10, 13, or 16 programs on a TV screen. The chipset allows users to store 4,000 channels.
"The Emma series chipsets are designed for HD TV and satellite TV. We expect sales to hit one billion yuan (US$131.57 million) by 2010, fueled by the Olympic Games," Shigeo Niitsu, NEC Electronics' market official, said during the expo.
Dolby displayed the "Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator" solution, which allows users to shoot video with 5.1 sound tracks with a portable digital video recorder.
The DV recorder is installed with four sound recorders, compared with traditionally one or two, so it can collect sounds from different directions. The collected sound will then be digitized and stored by a special chip, which adopts Dolby technology, according to Christophe Chabanne, Dolby's technical marketing manager.
The war of next generation DVD
BlueRay, whose capacity has reached 50 gigabyte and 10 times compared with normal DVDs, has attracted 170 companies backing it, including Sony, Philips, Samsung, Dell and China's Lenovo.
"In the next DVD sector, 74.4 percent of Hollywood films will be BlueRay DVD version compared with 29.5 percent for HD DVD," said Sumitaka Matsumura, an official at Pioneer, which supports BlueRay.
But a BlueRay DVD player costs US$500, almost double the price of HD DVD, an official at the HD DVD booth said.
But industry insiders said that in China, it will take time to adopt either of the two technologies as their patent fees are expensive.
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