Public Attendance at Electronics Fair Down, Orders Up
September 7, 2006
Attendance by the general public at the IFA consumer-electronics trade fair in Berlin, where the latest televisions, recorders, stereo systems and car-navigation gear were on display for six days until Wednesday, slumped nine per cent compared to a year ago.
But organizers said interest among businesspeople in the show had grown, with 35 percent of trade visitors coming from 32 countries outside Germany compared to 25 percent one year ago. Orders exceeded the 2.5 billion euros ($3.2 billion) booked one year ago.
Issuing closing statistics Wednesday, the organizers said 225,000 people in all had attended the fair.
Demanding discounts
In the days before the Internet, IFA was popular among consumer electronics fans as a place to collect catalogues and see the newest equipment, and attendances of 400,000 were common.
The fair organizers said a survey among the 1,049 exhibitors found most had signed up more sales to merchants than they had expected, but had also found that merchants showed less interest in high-priced gear and demanded discounts.
The big selling products were LCD and plasma television sets as well as wireless phones and mobile navigation equipment.
"We expect demand for our 42-inch LCD televisions to grow 1,000 percent in 2007," said Martin Bergmann of the European arm of Sharp. "The large volume of orders means we've already had to tell the factories to send more."
Missing in action
Some notable electronics manufacturers were absent in Berlin, electing to attend the CeBIT fair in Hanover instead.
Still, Rainer Hecker, chairman of the IFA sponsor, the German Consumer Electronics Trade Association GFU, said the move to hold IFA annually instead of every two years had been the right one.
"It was high time to fit in with the accelerated worldwide cycle of innovation," he said.