Report From CEATEC Japan: U.S. Companies Paying Attention to Asian Drives

Enterprise Networks & Servers, Nov 2004 by Marken, G A

HP and Microsoft have promised us yet another digital entertainment strategy that is going to create a whole new, breathtaking consumer experience. Can you wait?

But even before they could tell us how good it is going to be, Sony must have driven through your neighborhood and noticed that you and your neighbors are packrats and never throw anything away. Or they looked around Osaka and the other cities and towns of Japan and noticed there just isn't enough storage space in their small homes.

CEATEC Japan held a lot of excitement and even the 9th typhoon of the season couldn't dampen the excitement. However, the high wind and rain did cause the doors to close early.

So at CEATEC Japan Sony took the weather in stride to introduce the VAIO Type X.

They know what drives the Asian consumer and what will ultimately drive the consumer in the Americas. Think of it. A system that can record six channels, simultaneously. This is the AV recording server that will have home theater owners drooling. It has an unbelievable 1 TB hard disk. Translate that? It's 2 years of nonstop music, one month of DVD movie play or for the techie 1,000,000,000,000 bytes.

It also includes a TV time machine function that lets you watch programs while they are being recorded (technically we call it time shifting but time machine is so cool!). Use your remote control to go back in time, rearrange programs by genre and enter key words to find specific programs.

It's being snapped up in Japan and the company will probably roll it out over here mid next year (2005). It won't be cheap but with that much power couch potatoes can easily justify the investment just to get every football and baseball game that is being played anytime, anywhere.

People in the industry think of CeBIT in Germany each spring and CES right after the first of the year in Las Vegas. However, CEATEC Japan is where the Japanese (as well as Korean and Taiwanese) engineers go to show off what they have done to all of their peers.

Screens Dominate

LCD and plasma TVs and displays seemed to dominate the excitement, but then it is a lot easier to show and see great video than great chips. Sharp took the opportunity to show their huge 65-inch LCD TV got a lot of attention at the show. Everyone came to see the largest screen and the color brilliance.

There were screens and types for every taste and nearly every pocketbook.

But the real action all started with the new family of 0402 chips (0.4mm χ 0.2mm) smaller than a grain of sand and will pave the way for new, bold and fun products. Then you add new networking technologies and out-of-body mobile device experiences. There were tons of leading edge business technologies unveiled but those that catch the eye and heart of people are the consumer and AV technologies.

One of the reasons the Pacific Basin countries have taken PCs and technology into every part of their homes and lives is that with the exception of big-iron mainframes, they don't distinguish between consumer and IT products. Instead these are products for individuals.

The network that is good enough, robust enough and easy enough to use in the harsh environment of the home should be able to withstand the rigors of the office. If your entertainment devices can exchange content (data) without a hiccup with wires or wirelessly then you and your boss should be able to communicate whether you're in the office or on the road.

If you can transfer precious family images and memories between your camera/camcorder to DVD and your TV then you should be able to send production schedules and inventory control information to the factory floor, warehouse and accounting.

Naive isn't it? If the kids can't break it they think mature, responsible and reasonably intelligent adults should be in a position to be profitably productive with the tools.

Design, Delivery Flexibility

Since Japan finds it as difficult as the U.S. to compete on the basis of price once products become mainstream, they have perfected the ability to plan and develop products with abbreviated ramp-up production cycles and then shift volume production offshore (China, Thailand, Vietnam).

The new products are typical of what we'll see on a global basis for successful firms that produce small-lot production for made-to-order and targeted markets of enthusiasts. As the products become popular they rapidly ramp up manufacturing to capture marketshare.

As demand gains momentum manufacturing is shifted to low-cost centers. If demand slows they turn the production spigot off and move to the next generation of product with little or no remorse.

This year the show was dominated by the complete array of products designed for mobility - in the home, on the road, in the office. They made it a point to show and emphasize products you could use without wading through a user's manual. The screens, displays and TV sets are easy to view and when Web site designers figure out that they are designing for readership/viewership rather than their own egos the stuff we see on our screens will be easy to understand without squinting.