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Korea in the digital vanguard

by Kevin (Kilmo) Kang, Korea

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IFA 2007 begins today!

Aug 31, 2007 22:12

Yes, IFA 2007 begins today from Berlin, Germany. There are many manufacturers who are waiting for this moment to introduce their latest products to the public, including customers or business partners.

Most of the new products have been discovered by a number of gadget sites already and I found not one that hasn’t informed the public with a picture of a device.
Recently, MP3 & PMP manufacturers start to announce that their new players will be coming in September or October to target Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons.

Apple will announce their new iPOD Nano and 6th generation iPOD Video or known as ‘Touch’ on 5th Sep. Exciting! Microsoft are also preparing Zune 2nd generation, together with Zune Flash version to compete with iPOD Nano. These are the manufacturers who are outside of Korea. Ohˇforgot about the Sony Walkman series. However, these guys are minor in Korean market less than 15% in total.

Korea is also known as the founder of MP3P and has many good brands and products in this sector. An example of this are companies such as COWON/iAUDIO, iRiver and Samsung. Except for iRiver, 2 companies have announced their new upcoming line-ups. Samsung have mostly focused on a design similar to the Apple iPOD and will also bring in Bluetooth features as standard for all their products from entry level to high-end.

COWON is ranked as the 3rd place market holder in Korea with COWON/iAUDIO brands exported to more than 40 countries. They also announced 3 new upcoming models for 3,4Q of 2007. Those models are COWON A3, Q5 and iAUDIO U5.

COWON A3 and Q5 were unveiled at CES 2007 early this year. Those models are all PMP products which are more focused on movie playback rather than music playback. The main difference between the 2 products are the running OS and some key features.

The A3 is based on Linux and it is an integrated version of the A2. It is more-so a pure PMP with various movie/music supported codecs. The Q5 is multi-player based on WinCE 5.0 OS. This will give this unit the ability to have basic access of Windows applications like MS Office Viewer, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi and its full touch bases with 5 inch TFT LCD Touchscreen.
It seems their main competitor will be Archos until Apple release their iPOD Touch.

Now, I have a chance to get their IFA catalogue and find out the new player which is called iAUDIO U5. It’s a slim design MP3 player which is to be targeted at entry level users. It is designed to be simple with easy navigation and basic features. This model will enable them to have a full product line-up, from the entry level to high-end PMPs. Let’s see how they are going to enjoy rest of 2007. Someone please visit their booth and takes some great pictures for us!

BTW, I found some funny pictures which show that IFA’s gateway has been conquered by 2 Korean giants, - Samsung and LG. Check out the pictures below. This is not the first time I have seen their challenges on Ads. The same goes for CES or CeBIT in previous times. It is great to see Korean companies doing well out there but I am not sure this is the best way to get aheadˇ It doesn’t look to good and I don’t know why IFA authorization let them to do thisˇ maybe because of money. ;)

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pie

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pie says...
IFA 2007 IS begins today? Is that how we say it nowadays? :)

Aug 31, 2007 23:00

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kalmo

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kalmo says...
;) haha...thx mate.

Aug 31, 2007 23:10

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About Kevin (Kilmo) Kang

Kevin (Kilmo) Kang is a self-professed IT-savvy guy who's been having the time of his life making tech deals with new business partners in the Asia-Pacific areas. Like every Korean, he's gadget-crazy and is glad he lives in a country with one of the fastest-growing tech markets in the world. His taste for international work, however, arose from a nine-year stay in New Zealand where he fortunately made more friends than there are sheep.