CeBIT Gizmo-fest: Search for the Next Big – or Small – Thing

Michael Hedges March 13, 2006

Five long years after the bubble burst the consumer technology sector is regaining its confidence and CeBIT is the place to show and glow. The Hannover, Germany trade show has also regained its reputation as the world’s largest celebration of consumer technology. Beyond tantalizing every geek impulse with Origami (Microsoft), 8 megabytes storage (Samsung) and cellphones preloaded with Skype (BenQ) it is a technology summit where the digital world assesses its progress and plots its future.
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"Our sector is again growing faster this year in the EU than the economy as a whole," said trade association BITCOM vice president Heinz-Paul Bonn.

Among gizmo inventors, content creators (artists formerly known as broadcasters and producers), policy makers and, not to forget, investors the buzz is on mobile TV. The slight chill at CeBIT had little to do with the capacity to deliver mobile TV services, rather the means. No less esteemed steward of European media policy as DG Info Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding told an opening forum that Europe “cannot wait” to make these services readily available.

As many as 6 technical platforms for mobile TV are currently available in Europe; including UMTS, once thought to be a dead horse. Germany’s 16 State media regulators seem to have 16 plans all of which include allocating frequencies sometime in the future. With the football World Cup offering a possible springboard to entice subscribers Mrs Reding pleaded for regulators to get moving. All European telecoms use the GSM platform for mobile voice and text transmission but a common platform for video is, as they say, in the pipeline. The US has adopted one platform for mobile video and China could be next.

The long expected “digital dividend” – when analogue frequencies are phased out under ITU rules – is still six long years away. Mrs Reding suggested that now is the time for mobile TV allocations. "Access to frequencies (in Europe) is characterized by a patchwork of national approaches,” she said, “which haven't kept pace with technology developments."

"In the medium term, as mobile TV takes off, we may need further bandwidth for the new mobile, audiovisual services that come on-stream. This means we should start serious discussions now about the use of the digital dividend for spectrum, including further harmonization at EU level of frequency bands for potential use by services such as mobile TV."

Forecasts vary – from €3 to €30 billion – on the eventual value of the mobile TV market. The expected customer base is, of course, young people – marketers favorite target – who, so say the sages, have given up on traditional media. Estimates based as much on hearsay and optimism as hard data expect the mobile TV bubble to envelope 50% of all mobile phone users.

Bigger than a side note at CeBIT has been the joyful promise of RFID, radio frequency identification. These are little tags that can be placed on everything imaginable to, well, keep track of things. The most obvious use for this marvelous invention is replacing ugly bar codes on things.

Sticking a tiny RFID tag on everything would allow retailers to actually follow that apple (or Apple) through the grocery or shop. Checking out would become a thing of the past as the RFID tag on the apple could be matched with the RFID tag on the customers debit card or left ear.

Losing things could also become a lost art. Google’s Vint Cerf told one CeBIT panel we will be “interrogating our sock drawer with an RFID reader.”

“A check around the house with the reader would reveal the sock no matter if it was beneath the sofa or trapped in the washing machine. RFID could solve the mystery of missing socks and that's a very important contribution to society,"

Extend that to lost cats, dogs, cows and kids and a serious side to RFID opens. Who, then, might be lurking around with RFID readers? Can you just hear the excitement of market researchers?

Mrs Reding told another panel that “doubts” about RFID might prevent the technology from catching on. The European Commission, she said, is launching a public debate and workshops to “build consensus” on RFID applications and, of course, frequency spectrum requirements. Estimates on the value of the RFID business are forecast at €5.5 billion.

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CeBIT Opens Mobile TV Love Fest - March 16, 2007

The CeBIT consumer electronics festival comes to Hanover each year. The drum-beat couldn’t be louder: MO – BILE – TV. It’s sweeping across Europe.

“European companies should make use of this opportunity,” said German Technology Minister Michael Glos in an opening statement. “After all, mobile TV is a potential engine of growth for the European telecommunications industry.”  (see complete statement here in German)

Telecom regulators from the 27 EU Member States met privately with DG Info Commissioner Viviane Reding and a host of luminaries to wax poetic on the potential “millions” in the mobile phone business.

Mrs Reding added her 50 euro cents to the swell of mobile promoters saying she’ll limit roaming fees to 50 euro cents per minute. She also went on record favoring one de facto standard – DVB-H – for, well, everything.

Russia’s Technology Minister Leonid Reiman, leading the large Russian contingent, was questioned about the piracy problem. Russia is second only to China for knock-off CD factories. He said he’d deal with enforcement just as soon as new laws are written.

The loud MO – BILE – TV bleatings echoed across the exhibition halls, bouncing off bigger screens and smaller screens, screens all the same, all on display. Except, this year, far fewer.

Big exhibitors didn’t show up. Apple, Philips, Canon, Nokia and Motorola are missing.

CeBIT has for too long, if seems, beat the drum a step behind the market.