IFA to me represents a few things – it’s my first major event with Philips – and it’s also my first real taste of a consumer electronics event, having joined the industry from Jaeger-LeCoultre, a luxury Swiss watch maker.

So far I’ve seen the Philips IFA press conference and our keynote speech, both with Rudy Provoost, our CEO and others. I’ve also taken the bold step to jump right in with some of our Design workshops, co-presenting to our media guests with Jan-Eric Baars and Low Cheaw Hwei, two of Philips Design’s four chief design officers. We’ve had several sessions so far and two more tomorrow, the first of which I hear will be filmed for you to watch here!

The interesting thing for me as a relative newbie to CE is being able to meet and share ideas with colleagues and media from all over the world. It’s a great networking event and there’s already lots of useful ideas and insight sharing – particularly relating to one of my products, the EISA award winning Ambisound HTS8100 Soundbar home theater system (shameless product promotion?!).

We’ve also had some very interesting responses from the Design workshop with Cheaw Hwei. For example, some of our journalist guests were pretty surprised to hear that over 60% of consumers buying 5.1 home theater systems, don’t even unpack all the speakers!

It’s been a busy day – though we’re off to a press party tonight which will be fun, maybe I’ll tell you about that tomorrow!

Reshmi

We’ve had a crazy day over here in Berlin with an endless row of media wanting to interview our people and film our products. It seems that Aurea is in the news all over the world…

It’s keeping us busy talking the whole day long, no time to eat or drink and feet already hurting on the second day! Here’s Morven on a tour with a group of journalists. I wonder what she’s talking about there…?

Cheers,

Ina

Here we are again! Everything is set and the first journalists are arriving. Being at IFA is always exciting, especially this year with two Research projects and one new business.

This year TagTiles, Personal TV Channels and the 3D WOWZone are exhibited in our Future Zone. The demos look so good that it’s important to mention that these are still only prototypes of future lifestyle products.

At the press conference a stunning presentation was given by our CEO, Rudy Provoost, and the Aureas look superb showing Wong Kar Wai’s new film “There is only one sun”, especially comissioned by Phiilps to launch Aurea. This project emphasises that we are all working towards the same goal - providing experiences. Technology is the basis of our work in Research, but when we are working we think and build for experiences.

Saskia and Morven

I just arrived today, right in time for Rudy Provoost’s press conference.  The booth is still being finalised and our Sustainability area is shaping up well  - always a relief with all the frantic preparations!

The press conference was a great show. Most impressive, of course, was to see finally Aurea working in its finished form. The pilot versions I had seen in the development centre were already great, but to see lots of them all showing the Wong Kar Wai movie was truly cool. Talk about an immersive experience!

 Here are some live impressions of the press conference:

From a Sustainability perspective, it’s great that the whole Active Frame of Aurea is created with LEDs. Low power and no mercury, those are features we want to bring to our products, so am I glad that we could acheive this for Aurea. Have a look at some more images here.

Morven

Here’s a few video previews of our latest products which we’ll be showing on the stand during IFA.

Philips Cineos Flat TV with Perfect Pixel HD and Ambilight

SoundBar DVD Home Theatre with Ambisound

(more…)