Trade War Looms Over Berlin Electronics Show
BERLIN -- IFA executives are hedging their bets on GfK forecasts that the global consumer electronics industry will grow marginally in sales this year because the U.S. trade wars with China and the EU make it impossible to foretell what the fallout might be on the tech industry, they told IFA’s annual opening news conference Wednesday. GfK estimates global CE shipments will rise 0.8 percent in 2018 to 854 billion euros ($999 billion), after a 1 percent increase in the year’s first half, said the executives.
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“It’s impossible to predict how this is going to play out,” said Christian Goke, CEO of IFA producer Messe Berlin, in Q&A when asked about the impact of the trade wars. “None of you knows what, for instance, your president is going to decide the next day,” said Goke of President Donald Trump. Though it’s “pretty difficult” to forecast “the effects of potential trade wars, let me just say that free trade is the essence and foundation of every trade show,” said Goke. “If there isn’t any free trade, goods and people can’t move freely.” With trade wars, “you won’t see an audience like this, and for sure, you won’t see an exhibition like this,” he said of IFA.
Reinhard Zinkann, chairman of the major appliances division of ZVEI, the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association, thinks it's "obvious" that global “harms” are inevitable from trade wars or “any restrictions on trade,” he said. “Nobody, nobody -- no country, no politician, no person, no company -- can in the long run win,” he said. “Everybody will lose. I think that is very obvious. Everybody who has a clear mind should understand that.”
Zinkann worries most about the “threat” of trade wars because the world “is linked so much with each other,” he said. “As nobody can win, it’s like the Cold War. Whoever starts it must know there will be a reaction. Whoever reacts must know there will be counterreaction, and that’s a spiral that is going downwards and harming the world’s economy.” Zinkann hopes “politicians are bright enough to understand this, so that things that look bad right now won’t come true,” he said.
IFA Notebook
With the finalization of the HDR10+ licensing specs (see 1808280044) a few months ago, the Fox-Panasonic-Samsung dynamic-metadata-based HDR platform “is available essentially free of charge for everyone to use,” said Panasonic Chief Technology Officer Michiko Ogawa at the company’s pre-IFA news conference Wednesday. “Reactions from the industry are very promising, and I strongly believe that HDR10+ will be widely adopted.” With the HDR10+ logo program in place for qualified products, “now consumers will be able to easily recognize which TVs and Ultra HD Blu-ray players have been certified to deliver the very best performances,” she said.