IFA Berlin Trend Summary

Venue – Berlin

Website – b2b.ifa-berlin.com/ 

IFA is one of the biggest electronics show organized in Berlin every year. This CES on European soil covering electronic and electrical devices like TVs, phones, speakers, home appliances, kitchen appliances, navigation devices, home security solutions etc. Prominent exhibitors include Astra, Beko, Canon, Daewoo, Epson, Deutsche Telekom AG, Fujitsu Siemens, Grundig, JVC, Hama, Harman International, Hitachi, LG, Loewe, Metz, Olympus, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba and Vestel.

Last year at IFA, we had noticed a new trend/interest among home appliance vendors to add connectivity within their appliances. This year, the trend has matured further. Though still at nascent stage, most home appliance vendors have added wifi capability within their appliances to allow connectivity, monitoring and control from handheld devices. The market is still fragmented though as all vendors have created their own proprietary ways to talk to their appliances but hopefully in future, standards will be created to allow interworking between appliances from different vendors.

There were numerous vendors with products for home automation and security. Their product range included sensors, cameras and apps. Controlling lighting from apps was a common theme (esp new lights from Phillips that can be configured for different colors).

Healthcare wearables have also picked up strongly. There were abundant manufacturers showcasing their products like smart watches, activity trackers, sleep monitors etc. Similar to home automation scenario though, these devices were had mostly low level firmware level development.