Water costlier than electronics!

Ben Berkowitz

LAS VEGAS: Panasonic, the consumer brand of Japanese electronics heavyweight Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., has a vision for the future of its products: small is still beautiful, but it's even better to be everywhere.

The company's "lifestream" strategy aims to create more inter-connected electronic devices for home and portable entertainment, Fumio Ohtsubo, president of Panasonic AVC Networks Co. and senior managing director of Matsushita, said in a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The idea of interconnectivity has emerged as a central theme at the massive trade show, as more companies, including Microsoft Corp., show off products that allow PCs, TVs, stereos, and media recorders to be stitched together in home networks.

For its part, Matsushita has made its corporate theme "realizing a ubiquitous networked society," and Panasonic's research center says the company's goal is "to develop magical technologies that connect people by invisible threads."

At stake is the traditional consumer electronics model, as mainstream PC companies like Hewlett-Packard Co. and Gateway Inc. push into the higher-margin market for consumer electronics, driving down costs and playing up interactive features.

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE

Ohtsubo, speaking to a packed theater crowd on the first full day of CES, said Panasonic had been founded with the idea that like water, consumer electronics should be available to everyone and easy to use.

Ohtsubo and associates displayed a number of products highlighting Panasonic's strategy.

Among them was a concept unit for 2006, a palm-sized camcorder that will record high-definition video on a 4-gigabyte Secure Digital memory card.

He also showed new Panasonic DVD recorders with interfaces that can show six thumbnailed video clips and ultra-thin digital cameras that -- much like cell phones -- can be operated completely with a single thumb.

Other products on display included digital cable-ready television sets and televisions compliant with emerging standards for cable-ready, two-way interactive services.

Panasonic, which typically shows the widest range of new products at CES, including everything from phones and razors to TVs and DVD players, said it was working with Comcast Corp. on prototypes for the cable-ready TVs.

Such devices, based on the Open Cable Application Platform, would cut out the need for TVs to have a set-top box to connect to cable systems such as Comcast.

Ohtsubo said he recently visited an American supermarket where bottled water was two-and-a-half times the price of a solar-powered calculator. "Isn't that ironic? - electronics less expensive than water," he said.

© Reuters