Four Trends Spotted at the IFA Tech Conference
An international show like IFA can also expose some of the U.S. electronics market’s issues. The variety of smartphones on display here, for instance, exceed what American shoppers get because in so many other markets, people haven’t had to wait for their wireless carrier to start selling a particular model.
And if you’ve long since grown tired of paying to rent a cable box with features you didn’t get to choose, a tour of the show floor here won’t make you any happier. Across much of Europe, settled standards let TV vendors make and sell DVRs—for instance, a Panasonic model I spotted that combines a two-terabyte hard drive with a Blu-ray recorder—direct to customers.