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makomemoney

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Alias Born 03/28/2001

makomemoney

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Re: None

Thursday, 03/29/2001 10:13:03 AM

Thursday, March 29, 2001 10:13:03 AM

Post# of 93814
By: zibel $$$$ From CeBit
Reply To: None Thursday, 29 Mar 2001 at 10:09 AM EST
Post # of 651058


I was at the CeBIT show.

Before I start this CeBIT report, I want to make some satements :
I’m not a technical specialist. I went for 1 day to Cebit and visited (only) 20 companies of the thousands present at the show. I cannot garantee that I spoke to the right people nor that I asked the right questions, nor that I interpreted all the answers the way they were meant. I spoke to many Asian people, as English is as well for them as for me a foreign language, I may have misunderstood what was said.

After the show, I was puzled and wanted to have a reaction of RP on some things before posting it. So I called him and we had a conversation.

Now this is what I saw :

At the Sanyo booth There was a pendant type phone with music player + image player and cliprecorder. This product is expected to hit the Japanese market later this year.

At the Toshiba booth I saw the device eDigital helped to create. Speaking about content, I found interesting to see, behind the device, a box containing a Dataplay disk with music of Robin Williams and a game, that had to be activated via the Internet.. There were other dataplay products showcasted here, like a still picture camera and a handheld videoplayer, also known from dataplays website. There was a device looking quite familiar : a Personal Digital TV & Remote Control.


Then I went to IBM and they showed me a jukebox …. from the sixties, I think.
This was an eye catcher for their EMMS system, , I saw the microdrives, but nobody could show me portable devices using Microdrive. It was harder to find the Travelstar, we found it in the showcase of the thinkpad options. I saw no portable devices for Travelstar.

I asked for portable jukeboxes using Travelstar, they looked at me as if I was comming from Mars. I showed the pressrelease to everyone I saw, nobody could help. So I thought, I’m at the wrong IBM booth. As IBM has many booths I hoped I would see them later.

I saw the Archos 6000, when I looked at the picture, I found the harddrive beneath the device looking quite similar to the Travelstar. I didn’t noticed that when I was at CeBIT, so I can’t say for sure but will investigate.



I saw a company called A-Max with prototype Dataplay product (http://www.amaxhk.com/ products/products.htm) (available in september, the lady said) and a multi-codec device, the PA15 (http://www.amaxhk.com/products/napa/pa15/pa15.htm). The have also a carkit

At Baromtec I saw a multicodec player, which I can’t find on their website, but it was available for sale. (http://www.baromtec.com/realhome/allproduct.html)


At CMC I saw the Dataplay prototype as shown on http://www.dataplay.com/servlets/ProductList?action=productSearch


At Eastec I saw the ET700 with eDigital technology as told by the gentleman and the ET621M which supports MP3/wma/aac formats. I also got a brochure of the ET310B which is due to be used with the MMS, the Multi Media Station of IBM which is sold in Taiwan. (On the IBM booth they never heard of the Multi Media Stations) I spoke to the gentleman : He told me : eDigital is our partner for the jukebox, and also for some other devices but not for the ET320, which is shipping this month. The ET700 production will start in may. We ship mainly to the USA 200.000/year for 10.000 units to Europe. Asian market is not so good. FWIW : He told a friend that they don’t have OEMs yet for the ET700.

I saw a company called Digitra with a multi-codec player : http://www.digitra.com/products-mp-neo.html. They knew eDigital as a competitor. The lady said they used RT-os as operating system. She said : ‘like in Leal Time, you undelstand ?’ I understood.

At the Samsung booth, I saw the known products, and they knew e.Digital as a partner for Dataplay related products.

I went to the Imerge booth who produce digital sound server systems for stores and offices and homes etc. What they could tell me is that they are aware that, as their products are not portable and contain digital music, they missed a link to portable devices. For this missing link they were talking to Diamond Rio, Hango and Iomega.
http://www.imerge.co.uk/hessindex.html.


I saw all the IBM booths without finding the digital jukeboxes. So I called RP at his office. He wasn’t there (it was 4 am) and the same day I got an email from him stating : “I know that IBM is taking both units from time to time to private meetings during the show. The individuals from IBM entrusted with them are the ones that know e.Digital and our involvement in these products.”

When he called me wednesday, he pointed out that CeBIT is not a show for shareholders but for business people. And indeed : people are there to do business : most Asian companies are looking for partners and distributors. So the jukeboxes were kept hidden from individuals and curious shareholders and shown to I suppose, a select range of invited potential businesspartners. Strange that nobody on the IBM booth knew about this and very strange is the PR sentence “Presence in IBM's CeBIT booth boosts exposure for these designs to the international OEM community and hundreds of thousands of potential end users” At the phone RP said the presence at CeBIT was not directed to the endusers. I have no reason to disbelieve RP, so I suppose they were there, in the private rooms showing the jukeboxes, to the right people.
I asked him about other MultiCodec players being available for sale yet at other booths and he answered it was better not to be the first because then you’re a pionneer. He was also like said in BusyBump’s talk, very excited about being the first with Dataplay technology….


That’s it, I spend a lot of time looking for the Travelstar products, so couldn’t investigate much in other booths like Panasonic , TI, Motorola. I was rather disappointed at the moment, but after talking to RP, I felt a little better. Stil I don’t forgive them using the “hundreds of thousands of potential end users” teaser in their PR.

Regards.





Scott

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