avzombie.com

While I would hesitate to call Japan’s premier tech expo CEATEC, the greatest show on Earth, I think there’s some justification for hailing it as the most interesting. It’s at CEATEC that Japan’s best known consumer electronic brands traditionally trump one another with shiny new tech.
Unlike Western CE shows, such as IFA and CES, where the financial spend and physical size of a booth is often more important than what’s on it, CEATEC is all about modestly-sized exhibits bristling with genuine innovation. No one venue offers quite so much brilliance in such a compact area.

Interestingly, at the last CEATEC much of the local media attention was focused on the Panasonic stand, but not so much because of next generation product lines like NeoPDP. It transpired that the exhibition corresponded to both a corporate name change from Matsushita Electric Industrial to Panasonic, and its 90th anniversary. While the name change is historic, it really doesn’t affect Panasonic’s market outside of Japan. But locally, the shift was seismic.

In addition to retiring its Matsushita name, Panasonic also shuttered its sub-brand, National. This latter move was very controversial, as National is a popular, recognized brand name for white goods. To smooth the transition, Panasonic spent millions on a campaign dubbed ‘Hello Panasonic’ to help its loyal consumer base move with the times.

Even as CEATEC opened its doors, Hello Panasonic posters, banners and billboards sprung up all over Japan’s major cities. Indeed, the Hello Panasonic message was all but impossible to miss. President Fumio Ohtsubo maintained he had good reason to bring white goods under the Panasonic banner. ‘In the past we used National as a white-goods brand and Panasonic as an AV brand. Now under one brand we can propose a total solution for our daily lives,’ he told reporters.

On the company’s forward-thinking CEATEC booth, this translated to an expansion of its Viera Link protocol away from just a CEC link delivered via HDMI, to a whole house connected infrastructure. Within five years, it’s envisaged that a Panasonic TV would be communicating with same brand white goods such as fridges and lighting systems. Quite what they’ll hold a conversation about remains to be seen.

To celebrate the brand’s 90th birthday, various divisions within the Corporation were instructed to promote some of its more visionary concepts, including a 3D plasma home theater system and a futuristic range of NeoPDP plasmas and NeoLCD TVs. But perhaps it sees its ultimate future with smart house technology.

Within ten years, the company plans to turn entire walls into interactive displays, able to respond to hand gestures and spoken commands. ‘We are the only company in the world promoting such a total solution,’ said Ohtsubo.

Of course it remains to be seen if the brand’s bold vision can survive the global downturn. With sales stalling and revenues shrinking, Panasonic’s smart house vision could be relegated to the doghouse.

CEATEC 2009 runs between October 6-10 at Tokyo’s Makuhari Messe.