Unknown Trade War Fallout Casts Shroud Over Opening IFA News Conference

“It’s impossible to predict how this is going to play out,” said Christian Goke, CEO of IFA producer Messe Berlin, in Q&A when asked his thoughts about the possible impact of the trade wars. “None of you knows what, for instance, your president is going to decide the next day,” said Goke of President Donald Trump, though his audience was made up mostly of European journalists. The questioner had identified himself as a British financial research analyst. It was one of several implied blasts at the Trump administration's trade policies.

Though it’s “pretty difficult” to forecast “the effects of potential trade wars, let me just say that free trade is the essence and foundation of every trade show,” said Goke. “If there isn’t any free trade, goods and people can’t move freely.” With trade wars, “you won’t see an audience like this, and for sure, you won’t see an exhibition like this,” he said of IFA. Show organizers “absolutely” are sensitive to “that kind of problematic development,” he said.

Reinhard Zinkann, chairman of the major appliances division of ZVEI, the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association, thinks it's "obvious" that global “harms” are inevitable from trade wars or “any restrictions on trade,” he said. “Nobody, nobody -- no country, no politician, no person, no company -- can in the long run win,” he said in another veiled reference to the Trump administration. “Everybody will lose. I think that is very obvious. Everybody who has a clear mind should understand that.”

Zinkann worries most about the “threat” of trade wars because the world “is linked so much with each other,” he said. “As nobody can win, it’s like the Cold War," he said. "Whoever starts it must know there will be a reaction. Whoever reacts must know there will be counterreaction, and that’s a spiral that is going downwards and harming the world’s economy.” Zinkann hopes “politicians are bright enough to understand this, so that things that look bad right now won’t come true,” he said.

IFA executives repeatedly peppered their news conference presentations with implied slaps at CES. “A big welcome to IFA 2018, the largest consumer electronics show in the world,” said Goke. “We make it easier for visitors to get their job done,” he said. “That’s because IFA is well-structured. You know where to go if you’re looking for a specific category, and IFA Berlin, compared to others, is quite compact. All brands are here on our show floor. There’s no need to make your way from hotel suite to hotel suite through insane traffic to see the exhibitors that really matter.” CTA didn’t comment.

Though Foxconn CEO Terry Gou failed to appear as an IFA keynoter for the second year in a row (see 1807230015), several Foxconn brands are represented on the IFA show floor, IFA Executive Director Jens Heithecker told us. “We were in close contact with Foxconn, yet we still had difficulties to find the right time” for a Gou keynote this year, he said. “They appreciate our offer, and one day he will come here on stage, but not this year.”

IFA Notebook

With the finalization of the HDR10+ licensing specs several months ago (see 1806200045), the Fox-Panasonic-Samsung dynamic-metadata-based HDR platform “is available essentially free of charge for everyone to use,” said Panasonic Chief Technology Officer Michiko Ogawa at the company’s pre-IFA news conference Wednesday. “So far, reactions from the industry are very promising, and I strongly believe that HDR10+ will be widely adopted,” said Ogawa. With the HDR10+ logo program in place for qualified products, “now consumers will be able to easily recognize which TVs and Ultra HD Blu-ray players have been certified to deliver the very best performances,” she said. Five new series of Panasonic 4K TVs for Europe and three models of Ultra HD Blu-ray players are certified for HDR10+, said Ogawa. A firmware update delivered Tuesday also brings HDR10+ compatibility to several lines of Panasonic TVs already on the market, she said, In the Panasonic booth’s demo area several Ultra HD Blu-ray players are being shown, including the “high-end”-billed DP-UB9000, which will have dual HDR10+ and DolbyVision compatibility out of the box when it ships in the fall. The DP-UB420, billed as a “more affordable” model, will have HDR10+ only, and will ship mainly in Europe, but is also being considered for U.S. distribution, said Panasonic.

LG Electronics is using IFA to showcase the world’s first 8K OLED TV, an 88-inch model, said the company Wednesday in an announcement that seemed obviously designed to upstage Samsung’s expected introduction of an 8K QLED TV at its Thursday IFA news conference. LG’s announcement, though datelined Berlin, originated with the company’s U.S. subsidiary. Despite advancements in LCD technology, OLED “has been often referred to as the ‘next-generation display technology’ because it emits its own light, eliminating the need for any kind of backlighting,” said LG. “This allows for state-of-art TVs which redefine both the picture quality and the product design. Not only was LG able to pioneer such technologies, but it was also able to successfully market them.”

Launching worldwide Thursday, including in the U.S., is the Polaroid OneStep+ camera, a modernized hybrid digital/analog update of the already available analog i-Type resurrection of the original 1977 OneStep. The new OneStep+, which will sell for 159 euros ($186) in Europe, uses analog film packs to push out self-developing paper pictures. Pushing the camera’s small black button digitally captures the same image and sends it by Bluetooth to a smartphone running a new Polaroid app, said the company at a pre-IFA news conference Wednesday. Digital capture and transfer lets the old-style camera play modern tricks, such as selfie-shooting with a timer, taking security pictures when triggered by sound and scanning images for processing and manipulation. The camera can also be used in manual mode, which gives the user full control over exposure and shutter speed. Though the camera is made in China, the film packs are made in Holland at one of the original Polaroid factories, said the company. All the new film packs use different chemicals from those developed by inventor Edwin Land and his successors, because of modern safety regulations, it said.