Six days, 1,500 exhibitors from 48 countries, 12 sectors, 821 new products: the Berlin Ifa, which opens on 2 September, marks the return of major technological events in attendance. born in 1924 as Grosse Deutsche Funkausstellung, it has been the largest technology fair in Europe for over a decade: in the last edition before the pandemic it hosted 238,700 visitors, 1,930 industrial partners and 5,360 journalists.
Important announcements are expected from large companies such as LG and Samsung, as well as presentations from Lenovo, Huawei, Honor and many others. As always, there will be gadgets of all kinds, but also computers, tablets, smartwatches, TVs, appliances, home security and automation systems, audio and video systems. There will be no video games (for that there is E3 in Los Angeles), there will be no Apple and Google, which for years have held their events in splendid isolation, will have a limited Microsoft presence. There are also few smartphones, which in Europe are usually launched at the Mobile World Congress, between February and March, in Barcelona. On the other hand, Samsung has just presented the new leaflets, Oppo is planning a major launch on August 31 but who knows why in Paris, the new iPhone is upon us. So, for smartphones, if anything, the eyes are on Honor, once a low-cost brand from Huawei, now a rising name in the western market. In the invitation to the event you can see a tablet, a laptop, a phone and wireless earphones: an entire ecosystem, in short, like what few competitors can offer. The appointment is for 2 September at 5 pm, with the keynote of the CEO George Zhao which is entitled “A connected world“. In addition, Tony Ran, President of Honor Europe, will explain how European consumers can take advantage of the new products brought together under the Smart Life label.
For the rest, new products are expected from Samsung SmartThings, the IoT (Internet of Things) platform of the Korean company for smart refrigerators, washing machines and more, but they do not exclude micro-LED televisions and accessories for gaming and office.
In recent years LG had one of the most impressive stands; it has been out of the smartphone market for some years, but there will be no shortage of products: from PCs to monitors, from air purifiers to specialized appliances for shoe care, up to the largest OLED TV in the world, the 97-inch G2.
Also for TV, TCL has announced that it will attend IFA 2022 and go big, with a global press conference on September 1st and then a huge exhibition for the rest of the week with a booth of over 2,500 square meters. There will be displays, soundbars and wearables, as well as a full range of smart appliances and an assortment of new prototype televisions.
In a series of contemporary events at Ifa, Philips should also show new televisions and soundbars, perhaps still in collaboration with Bowers & Wilkins, while some news should also come from Toshiba, which years ago was among the first producers to exhibit a prototype of 8K TV, right at the Ifa. Bang & Olufsen will announce “a new product that will change the cards”: most likely it will be audio, but it could also be an innovative soundbar.
For computers, given the presence of Lenovo and Asus, there should also be interesting news, with two focuses: on the one hand mid-range and low-end devices with good performance, on the other experiments on new possible evolutions of the laptop, first of all with foldable displays. And here we might get a glimpse of Huawei’s new bet, which following the ban on using Android on its smartphones, has seen market share drop rapidly outside of China and is reconverting itself as a laptop manufacturer, with a small but interesting range of products.
For small and large appliances, at least Haier Europe is worth mentioning, presenting new solutions where the IoT is the protagonist in environments created ad hoc for Candy, Hoover and Haier. But also Beko (both on their own and as Grundig) and AEG will bring connected appliances to their stands that are increasingly attentive to water and energy consumption, an indispensable requirement for those who decide to buy a new appliance.
But there will also be much more, in the huge halls of the Messe in Berlin: solar generators, semi-solid state domestic energy accumulators, thermostats and valves for smart radiators, mini ovens, zero-waste backpacks, tools that use artificial intelligence. and machine learning for smart and sustainable homes, smart helmets for motorcycle safety, Bluetooth speakers, smart locks, robotic pool cleaners, super-compact home theaters, virtual reality devices, global translators, wireless headsets, indoor growing systems , male sexual health technology, biometric devices for pets and who knows what else. We will tell you about it, starting from September 1st.