Miss IFA 2017 is named Alexa

Uninterrupted growth for the past ten years

Number of exhibitors (1,823) and visitors (245,000, roughly half trade visitors, half general public) are slightly up but the show is actually limited by the158,000 square meters floor space that cannot be extended.

This growth is quite impressive for a tradeshow focussed on devices and brands (with many leading ones not attending), and not, like CES, on overall ecosystems (chipsets, ODM, software & services) where most the value, if not the revenue, is now generated. Amazon ended up opening physical book shops for its customers and it seems attendees do enjoy seeing and touching the gadgets that will end up under the Christmas tree… even though they are increasingly purchased online.

Note: this year an IFA NEXT area looks beyond this holiday season and focus on newcomers that will grow over the next 2-5 years, and IFA+ for a sneak peak on 10 year visions.

Alexa everywhere and smart speakers overdose

IFA has grown into Europe’s answer to CES and this year unsurprisingly the voice assistants are everywhere from home appliances to Yamaha’s pianos to Panasonic robot fridge which brings cool drinks to your couch. Alexa is especially successful and Amazon is hiring aggressively to maintain its lead over other such as Google Assistant or Siri, supposedly smarter and with a wider language support (critical success factor in Europe) but less adopted so far.

The level of hype will not be sustainable as consumers will soon realize the current limitations around fragmentation (despite Alexa & Cortana new collaboration smart speakers come in multiple flavors to support individual voice assistants, Samsung/Harman will soon have five!) and usability (many devices can’t afford or don’t need far field voice microphones, have still limited intelligence or simply can’t be always listening in order to save power). In the mean time it is a race to the bottom to copy/beat on price or features the Amazon Echo (Dot), the Google Home or the forthcoming Apple Homepod.

A pivot for wearables

Following disappointing sales of smartwatches (except to some extent the Apple Watch) and the commoditization of fitness trackers, there are fewer new products this year and they try a different approach by moving away from a ‘Swiss knife’ to focus on specific use cases : simple analog watch with notifications, health monitor or sports coach. It is unclear if this will succeed but the market is still growing fast: analyst now often include the soaring sales of Bluetooth headsets in the Wearables category. From Samsung and Sony to Fitbit and Bang & Olufsen, all vendors at the show had products to replicate the success of Bragi in the emerging Hearables section, and the market share of the Airpods.

Anxiously waiting for September 12th

Despite being half of the Consumer Electronics revenues, IFA has never been a smartphone show. A few notable phones have been announced at the show (LG & Sony, Samsung launched the Note 8 in NY last week) with a focus on bezel-less, widescreen displays, high quality sound, Augmented Reality, advanced dual camera features or wireless charging …which are all rumoured attributes of the next iPhone launching later this month.

PC becoming a niche for VR and gamers

The 40% increase in performance of the latest Intel CPUs are not enough to make consumers interested again in laptops or even hybrid tablets. This leaves the hardcore gamers and (tethered for now) Virtual Reality enthusiasts as the only significant pocket of growth for the PC market. Mainstream consumers are more likely to use Augmented Reality on their smartphones to fight with Light Sabers (Lenovo/Disney) or plan their next trip to Ikea.

A (modest) comeback for TVs

IFA and CES have always had a special place for TVs. A brutal price war has been affecting all the players but there is hope this year as OLED screens win more consumers in the premium tier while high quality 4K HDR are affordable in large screen sizes (55”-75”) for consumers who even if they are cord-cutters need a large screen to Netflix and Chill.

The Smart Home is going nowhere yet but appliances get connected either way

Outside of the voice assistants, consumers see still less value and ease of use than fears of fragmentation, privacy, security and extra cost in the smart home. It is still early days for home robots besides vacuum cleaners but the category has real potential. However Homekit, the OCF pushed by Samsung and the many other actors have yet to resonate with the mass market. Despite this, more and more appliances get connectivity (via Wi-Fi mostly), especially in China. The killer use cases ? Start your air conditioner when leaving the office…and be able to be voice-enabled by Alexa !

Note: views expressed here are my own. Analysis of the previous edition of IFA can be found here