Japanese banking on technology

By PETER GRIFFIN


TOKYO - Some Japanese may struggle to get their mouths around the term "ubiquitous society", but it is the theme of Ceatec 2004, Asia's biggest technology expo, which has been taking place in Tokyo this week.

As Japan's electronics firms face sluggish domestic spending, a weak United States consumer market and competition from low-price Korean and Chinese rivals, the big challenge is finding new products. The Japanese are banking on technology that lets people have access to information and communications wherever they are - at home, in the office, or on the move.

Trends at Ceatec:

Plasma and LCD go big: They're the de facto replacements for the box that sits in the corner of your living room - LCD and plasma TV screens.

But as Kiwis make tentative steps towards their first plasma or LCD TV, the Japanese are planning for our viewing requirements years out.

Panasonic was displaying the biggest commercially available plasma screen - the 160 cm (65in) Viera. Sharp unveiled the world's largest LCD screen, which also clocks in at 160cm and Sony is breathing new life into the rear-protection market with a 178cm television.

Prices for the flat panels used in plasma and LCD displays are falling but there are concerns among some analysts that with an average price of around US$5000 ($7410) for a 106cm plasma screen, demand will still not be great enough to justify the level of manufacturing planned for next year.

With the quality of LCD and plasma now so good, electronics companies are trying to outdo each other. Sony was showing off a TV using a light-emitting diode backlighting system which it claims gives better picture clarity than other LCD and plasma screens. Toshiba's answer is a flat-panel TV which uses half the power of other LCD and plasma screens.

Canon and Toshiba have formed a joint venture called SED (surface conduction electron emitter display) and will spend US$1.8 billion over the next few years to develop it.

Expected to be especially useful for displays larger than 81cm, SED's appeal is that it gives the natural quality of a high-quality cathode ray tube but is designed as a flat panel.

TV on the phone: Japanese mobile phone makers are falling over each other to offer digital radio broadcasting and TV features.

The bulky phones are selling for as little as one yen in some Tokyo stores when consumers sign up to a monthly contract.

However, channel surfing on the mobile is a power-hungry pastime, although Sanyo, is about to release a TV phone with a claimed viewing time of two hours.

Programming can be copied to mini SD storage cards for later playback. The phones, expected to be a hit in Asia where commuters face long train trips to and from work, may struggle to sell elsewhere.

A new study of 1300 phone users by US-based Lyra Research shows that only a small minority of people are interested in watching TV on mobile devices.

Sony's stop-gap till PS3: Sony's flagship Playstation 2 games console has been given a major revamp that Sony hopes will keep its gaming business ticking over until the much-anticipated release of the third generation Playstation.

Development of the PS3 is well underway but its release may still be some time off.

In the meantime, the PSX is filling the gap. The white box packs a computer hard drive and recordable DVD drive with the games console, so users can record TV programmes to the box and burn content to DVD.

Sony has also thrown in Memory Stick and iLink access to allow storage of digital still images and video camera clips on the PSX, which comes in 160GB and 250GB versions priced at 70,000 yen and 90,000 yen respectively.

Japanese retailers have been offloading the PSX as cheap as 40,000 yen, because they are disappointed at the sales volumes of the PSX.

Plans to sell the PSX in North America and Europe appear to be on hold, which means the machine will have to experience a surge in popularity if it is to make it here before the launch of the PS3.

The MP3 war heats up: There wasn't an Apple iPod in sight at Ceatec, but Toshiba, Sony, Sanyo and Panasonic were just some of the companies touting their own MP3 players at the tech show.

Japan still clings to the MD (minidisc) music format which has had lukewarm success elsewhere.

Toshiba's answer to the iPod is the Gigabeat, a hard-drive based MP3 player that is being released in 10, 20 and 60GB versions in Japan later this year.

They will be priced from US$350 to US$575.

Panasonic has a re-vamped D-snap MP3 player/digital still camera device that can snap still and moving images, play back video and music files, record voice notes and share contents.

D-snap is versatile but falls down on storage which is limited to the size of the SD flash memory card used.

In-car displays: From Panasonic to Pioneer, the Japanese electronics makers are picking in-car navigation and entertainment as a growth area.

Most of the manufacturers now feature full-colour LCD devices with global positioning system software, which has advanced a lot in the past 18 months.

Many navigation systems now feature 3D maps allowing users to experience the view from the street rather than the more traditional "bird's eye" view.

The devices are also increasingly featuring SD and Memory Stick slots for digital maps to be loaded into the systems.

Pioneer has taken in-car displays a step further, unveiling a concept car which uses LCD panels to display everything from speed and engine information, to in-car entertainment.

Combo drives pre-dominate: Tape is not yet dead with a number of devices featuring tape drives as well as hard-disk drives and DVD burners.

Some drives even feature flash memory slots as manufacturers attempt to squeeze more value out of the rapidly commoditised DVD recorder market.

Panasonic's combo machine is based on the DVD-RAM standard, while similar devices from other companies support the DVD+RW standard and bundle hard drives up to 400GB in size - enough capacity for a day of programming or more.

* Peter Griffin attended Ceatec 2004 as a guest of Panasonic.