On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

By Peter Weedfald President, Gen One Ventures

We all know the foundation, landscape, and future of brick and mortar retailing is changing forever. The mammoth social mediums, internet purchasing, information gathering, entertaining, mobile apps, consumer based social publishing, smart phones, tablets, and any other glowing boxes allowing for fast push and pull actions and reactions, are the driving forces of this change.

Specifically, social media, social networking and engineering, all coupled with instant worldwide sales opportunities and competition, has changed the necessity, style, listening skills and past engagement processes for all retailers. Traditionally store traffic, size of basket and consumer future store visits and buying habits within were the core focus and measurement of revenue and margin pools for success. 2013 declares there is much more to opportunity and or failure through our new hyper-changing retail business than measurements past.

As buying audiences have gone wild, deep, wide and e-mobile in their internet hunts even while standing in a retail location, as they have proven lackluster loyalty to retail brands over time, hunting rather for best price for the same sku's, it is surely time, as we enter the retail business pylon of 2013 for retail to change, to reset for competitive growth. To better study the engaging (or lack of) traffic dynamics based upon a dynamically changing, multi-modal world of colossal consumer choice in retail buying.

Samsung claims it has the biggest 4K/UHD TV on show at CES 2013 with the UN85S9 (aka S9)-- an impressive 85-inch display with a striking "floating" industrial design.

A floor standing behemoth, the S9 is mounted on an easel-esque frame allowing users to tilt the display up and down. The stand also houses a 120W 2.2 speaker array surrounding the display.

A 1.35Ghz quad-core A15 processor powers an upscaling engine able to convert regular HD content to UHD-level picture quality, as well as newly enhanced Smart Hub software and voice control features.

Connectivity options include Smart View (streams content between TV and Samsung mobile devices) and AllShare (now allowing the monitoring of Samsung "smart" appliances from the TV), while ports include x4 HDMI inputs and optical audio.

Does the future of TV lie within 4K, 8K, 3D or OLED technologies? Apparently not according to Samsung and LG at CES 2013-- the future of TV is, wait for it, "curved."

Both companies claim to have "the world's first" curved OLED TV at the show. Who is in the right? We doubt anyone was actually keeping count...

In any case, the curved OLED TVs are fairly similar-- both are 55-inch displays that appear concave when viewed from the front and even more bent from the sides. Apparently the shape improves on viewing angles, even if an over-enthusiastic Samsung PR describes it as "IMAX-like" (never mind IMAX screens measure around 70 feet/21m).

Sony hopes for smartphone success in 2013 as it launches the Xperia Z at CES 2013, a premium-looking device with non-shatter tempered glass construction.

While sleek (just 7.9mm thick) and non-rubberised, the Xperia Z has an unlikely claim to fame-- it meets military specifications IP55 and IP57, meaning it is dust resistant and survives under 1m of water for up to 30 minutes.

A 5-inch TFT Reality display handles 1920 x 1080 resolution (at 443 dpi) while a quad-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, Adreno 320 graphics and 2GB RAM power the device. An improved Bravia Mobile Engine 2 augments colours and contrast on videos and images.

The device is also the first to carry Sony's own Exmor RS sensor, allowing it to capture HDR video via 13MP rear-facing camera.

The OS of choice is Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) although a 4.2 upgrade is in the works.

Completing the package is NFC connectivity, allowing users to connect the device with NFC-enabled Sony speakers, headsets and TVs.

Also announced for "select markets" is a smaller (but identical internally) variant of the Xperia Z-- the Xperia ZL. Sony gives no mention which markets these are, but Europe does show preference for smaller devices than beyond the pond...

Both Xperia Z and ZL will be available from Q1 2013.

Go Sony Xperia Z