CeBIT 2008 March 12, 2008
The gang suited up to visit CeBIT 2008 in relation to Project E. CeBIT was rather dull overall; it turned into a large, overcommercial gamerfest. Young geeks sporting oversized AMD and Intel totes with an amazing amount of nice and less nice magazines, pamflets and other advertising material absolutely dominated this conference. And while all the larger companies were having a contest on who could shout ‘innovation’ the loudest, it were the peripheral and smaller Taiwan and Hong Kong pavillions which carried the most interesting products, for us as a design company at least.
Yes, we just had to take a shot of this… peculiar MacBook Air.
Arriving at the grotesque Hannover Messe, there was a clear distinction between focus groups. Hordes of gitty teenaged geeks, expensive and cheap suits, and the random tech blogger were easily distinguishable. What surprised me was that there were actual families coming here, for a nice day out. I’d rather visit a museum than a dollarfest like this, but hey, to each their own taste. If daddy feels comfortable checking out the latest Asus machines with mom, while the kids stay plastered to the Microsoft pavillion, then who am I to judge them, right?
Like I said, the smaller stands were most interesting to us. Chinese manufacturers able to design custom batteries for our products is what we needed and what we got. Double shot injection moulding for casings, circuit board manufacturers… we added a lot of new business cards to our collection. This is what we came here for, and thankfully, we were done quite soon with this mission. In between business meetings we had the time to scope out the larger pavillions.
I was specifically interested in Sony Ericsson’s stand. Before I aquired my iPhone, I owned a dreadfully slow Nokia N95. This was the phone I used after my Sony Ericcson P910i broke down. And that, my friends, was one of my favourite phones ever, hence the interest in SE’s stand. Their new Xperia caught my eye. I held it, and was amazed and the terrible build quality. Compared to the iPhone, the devices materials looked and felt utterly cheap, and the UI was interesting, but Windows at its core. A dreadful decision to switch to Windows for their high-end smartphone model in my opinion, but then again, Symbian also has its defects.
The amount of designer pavillions was insane though. I remember conferences where there were only a handful of companies who had designers do their stands, but the Apple’ish white finishes, hip contrasting colours and smart MacBook Air product placement were so ubiquitous I became immune to this style - at this conference anyways. So next time we visit CeBIT we’d better have a pavillion of our own or I’m not very interested in going.
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