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WHAT, NO HI-FI?
Listed under: Comments
Published: Friday, October 08, 2010
Not my suggestion for a new magazine title, but my observations from the recent IFA show in Berlin.
OK, not strictly true, but it wasn’t exactly overflowing with equipment designed to reproduce music with absolute fidelity. There were an awful lot of 3DTVs, but not much Hi-Fi, and from what I saw (with apologies to any that I missed) only one British Hi-Fi company in evidence.
IFA has changed over the past few years. I remember when I first went, there was a goodly amount of Hi-Fi equipment on show, but the size of the audio hall has become smaller each year. Exhibiting at IFA was made all the more difficult for small(ish) companies when it became an annual event. It is an expensive show at which to exhibit and some businesses opted to take part every other year, continuing the bi-annual status of the show.
Whilst that is understandable from a cost perspective, in an industry that is as fast moving as the consumer electronics one, it is harder to justify from a marketing perspective. Or perhaps British companies don’t go to IFA because they perceive it to be a German or European event that doesn’t have a bearing on UK business? The thing is though, it’s the only decent sized consumer electronics show in Europe and certainly way better and bigger than anything we have in the UK. I’m not going to get into a long moan about ‘why can’t we have a show like it in the UK?', but isn’t it a bit of a shame that the largest CE market in Europe doesn’t host the most important show? Here is also not the place to open up the old debate about the UK Hi-Fi show scene - that one’s been done to death on many occasions, with no sensible conclusions reached.
the mind share problem
What I’m getting at is the perception of Hi-Fi on the world stage and its position in the CE market and in the minds of consumers. If our industry and products were more important to consumers, we’d no doubt see a much larger turnout of Hi-Fi companies at shows like IFA. Sadly, it isn’t that important to the majority of people - we’ve been overtaken by sexier products. But that’s no reason not to try, and there are real opportunities out there for us to make a bigger impact on consumers’ purchasing intentions.
Take the aforementioned 3DTV explosion. Walking into the Panasonic hall at IFA, one was met with a wall full of 3DTVs of various sizes, all blurting out their multi-dimensional offerings to masses of bespectacled observers. Interestingly, one of the demo videos they were showing was the promo for London 2012. If anything is going to sell 3DTV to the Brits it’s going to be sport, as understood by Sky with its 3D pub football offering. Our task is to maximise the opportunities for the add-on sale that we can make.
The easy ones are the wall bracket, furniture and the HDMI lead, but we owe it to our passion to be pushing the good sound quality angle. After all, now that people can have a 50-inch 3D HDTV picture in their living room, don’t they deserve to hear the soundtrack to Avatar or the wail of the vuvuzelas and screams of the crowd on a glorious multi-channel audio system?
We need, first of all, to get people in to the shops to sell them the 3DTV of course, before we can start extolling the virtues of a 7.1 surround sound system. Despite the low margins and understandable reluctance to compete with the likes of JLP, we, as independent specialists, should embrace it. As a trend it may not last long - who knows? - but it’s a new technology that’s getting people excited and we are perfectly placed to position ourselves as the local experts. If we can make our offering enticing and attractive enough to grab people’s attention, we can get them into the store. Then we unveil our real expertise, that of extracting the best audio performance possible and the real enjoyment benefits that this brings to our customers.
rise of the tablets
Elsewhere at IFA, the pretenders to the iPad throne were on display. Samsung and Toshiba were leading the way with their offerings and pretty good they looked too. The Samsung product had more than a touch of Apple’s GUI to it, and it did offer some key features that as yet Apple haven’t added to the iPad, such as a camera. But regardless of whether people opt for the original or one of the new clones, the ability to use such products as the nerve centre of a home entertainment system is significant.
I’ve talked before about the rise of the mighty iPod and the danger of failing to recognise that it is here to stay, and that it has done a very good job in getting people to listen to more music than ever. We can ignore these products at our peril, or embrace them and show consumers the real benefits available through integrating their networked systems into a quality home entertainment solution.
What is obvious from IFA is that technology is marching on with a seemingly unending acceleration. We can, and must, be part of it if we are to keep our part of the industry alive and well. There’s no reason for Hi-Fi/home cinema and the world of computers, networks, IPTV, 3DTV, Cloud computing and the like to be mutually exclusive. That’s why BADA is constantly developing and adapting its training courses, such as Netcraft for computer networks and Visioncraft for home entertainment, to cover the latest technologies. Packed full of useful information to help retailers address consumers’ requirements, the BADA courses are open to anyone who wants to learn. To find out more drop me a line or give me a call.
Contact: +44 (0)20 8150 6741
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
IFA has changed over the past few years. I remember when I first went, there was a goodly amount of Hi-Fi equipment on show, but the size of the audio hall has become smaller each year. Exhibiting at IFA was made all the more difficult for small(ish) companies when it became an annual event. It is an expensive show at which to exhibit and some businesses opted to take part every other year, continuing the bi-annual status of the show.
Whilst that is understandable from a cost perspective, in an industry that is as fast moving as the consumer electronics one, it is harder to justify from a marketing perspective. Or perhaps British companies don’t go to IFA because they perceive it to be a German or European event that doesn’t have a bearing on UK business? The thing is though, it’s the only decent sized consumer electronics show in Europe and certainly way better and bigger than anything we have in the UK. I’m not going to get into a long moan about ‘why can’t we have a show like it in the UK?', but isn’t it a bit of a shame that the largest CE market in Europe doesn’t host the most important show? Here is also not the place to open up the old debate about the UK Hi-Fi show scene - that one’s been done to death on many occasions, with no sensible conclusions reached.
the mind share problem
What I’m getting at is the perception of Hi-Fi on the world stage and its position in the CE market and in the minds of consumers. If our industry and products were more important to consumers, we’d no doubt see a much larger turnout of Hi-Fi companies at shows like IFA. Sadly, it isn’t that important to the majority of people - we’ve been overtaken by sexier products. But that’s no reason not to try, and there are real opportunities out there for us to make a bigger impact on consumers’ purchasing intentions.
Take the aforementioned 3DTV explosion. Walking into the Panasonic hall at IFA, one was met with a wall full of 3DTVs of various sizes, all blurting out their multi-dimensional offerings to masses of bespectacled observers. Interestingly, one of the demo videos they were showing was the promo for London 2012. If anything is going to sell 3DTV to the Brits it’s going to be sport, as understood by Sky with its 3D pub football offering. Our task is to maximise the opportunities for the add-on sale that we can make.
The easy ones are the wall bracket, furniture and the HDMI lead, but we owe it to our passion to be pushing the good sound quality angle. After all, now that people can have a 50-inch 3D HDTV picture in their living room, don’t they deserve to hear the soundtrack to Avatar or the wail of the vuvuzelas and screams of the crowd on a glorious multi-channel audio system?
We need, first of all, to get people in to the shops to sell them the 3DTV of course, before we can start extolling the virtues of a 7.1 surround sound system. Despite the low margins and understandable reluctance to compete with the likes of JLP, we, as independent specialists, should embrace it. As a trend it may not last long - who knows? - but it’s a new technology that’s getting people excited and we are perfectly placed to position ourselves as the local experts. If we can make our offering enticing and attractive enough to grab people’s attention, we can get them into the store. Then we unveil our real expertise, that of extracting the best audio performance possible and the real enjoyment benefits that this brings to our customers.
rise of the tablets
Elsewhere at IFA, the pretenders to the iPad throne were on display. Samsung and Toshiba were leading the way with their offerings and pretty good they looked too. The Samsung product had more than a touch of Apple’s GUI to it, and it did offer some key features that as yet Apple haven’t added to the iPad, such as a camera. But regardless of whether people opt for the original or one of the new clones, the ability to use such products as the nerve centre of a home entertainment system is significant.
I’ve talked before about the rise of the mighty iPod and the danger of failing to recognise that it is here to stay, and that it has done a very good job in getting people to listen to more music than ever. We can ignore these products at our peril, or embrace them and show consumers the real benefits available through integrating their networked systems into a quality home entertainment solution.
What is obvious from IFA is that technology is marching on with a seemingly unending acceleration. We can, and must, be part of it if we are to keep our part of the industry alive and well. There’s no reason for Hi-Fi/home cinema and the world of computers, networks, IPTV, 3DTV, Cloud computing and the like to be mutually exclusive. That’s why BADA is constantly developing and adapting its training courses, such as Netcraft for computer networks and Visioncraft for home entertainment, to cover the latest technologies. Packed full of useful information to help retailers address consumers’ requirements, the BADA courses are open to anyone who wants to learn. To find out more drop me a line or give me a call.
Contact: +44 (0)20 8150 6741
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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