Anytime, Anywhere Devices to Rule Holiday Gift-Giving, Pepcom Event Shows

Some 90 hardware, service, software and accessories companies displayed their holiday offerings at Pepcom’s annual Holiday Spectacular media event in New York Wednesday. Among the highlights were new tablets, including previews of ViewSonic models due out in October.

ViewSonic’s ViewPad 7e is a hybrid tablet/e-reader, with a suggested retail price of $199, that’s targeted to the “value” customer said Jeff Volpe, president, ViewSonic America. The seven-inch tablet packs a 1-GHz processor, Amazon Services for Android and pre-installed apps including Twitter, TuneIn Radio and Kindle for Android e-book reader. A more robust seven-inch tablet ($379) includes a high-res 1024 x 600 capacitive multi-touch panel and Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core A9 1GHz processor, he said. Volpe sees panel makers driving a variety of screen sizes for tablets, with seven-inch models dedicated to e-readers and larger models headed for multimedia and gaming use. The nine-inch form factor is “stuck in the middle,” he said. ViewSonic doesn’t offer a nine-inch model now, “but it’s on our roadmap,” he said. ViewSonic is on its third-generation tablets and has already discontinued series one, Volpe said. “They don’t last very long,” he said, saying it’s a software issue due to Google’s operating system transitions and revisions. “As the OS stabilizes, product longevity will improve,” he said. ViewSonic also previewed the 24-inch V3D245 3D monitor ($499) that will ship in October with a pair of Nvidia active stereoscopic glasses and the 23-inch V3D231 ($349) that will be bundled with clip-on polarized lenses.

Monsoon is coming back to the consumer market after pulling back during the recession in 2008, said Colin Stiles, executive vice president of sales and marketing. The company launched its $199 Vulkano Lava remote TV and mobile DVR product Wednesday that enables cable and satellite subscribers to access and control TV content from smartphones and tablets anywhere they have an Internet connection. Consumers can view content from their cable or satellite service on their portable devices using $12.99 apps available at the Apple, BlackBerry and Android app stores, he said. Later in the fall, the company will ship a $249 version with a built-in 340-gigabyte hard drive. The company plans to offer a full gamut of streaming video apps, although it only has an agreement with YouTube at present, Stiles said. Using built-in Wi-Fi, users can record live video for playback on an iPad or other device, he said. Video is passed from a set-top box to the Vulkano via composite or component analog video inputs to be in accordance with Fair Use copyright law, Stiles said. The DLNA and UPnP-compatible device has a built-in electronic program guide with Tribune data and allows consumers to view cable or satellite content over other TVs or video devices in the home without paying additional service fees for boxes, he said. Monsoon is working on OEM deals with cable companies on Vulkano products that would enable cable companies to offer value-added services, including streaming applications, he said.

D-Link previewed a dual-band wireless router with HD Fuel technology that optimizes a home’s Wi-Fi bandwidth so users with demanding applications like HD video VoIP calling and gaming maintain a seamless signal without lag time or interruptions, a company spokeswoman told us. HD Fuel technology enables a built-in Quality of Service (QoS) engine to automatically prioritize high-bandwidth activities, allocating extra bandwidth to data-intensive activities, she said. The $149 router will be available in October, she said. D-Link also showed a 500-Mbps powerline switch kit ($159) that allows consumers to connect an entertainment system to a network using any electrical outlet, she said.

Cloud-based storage service SugarSync said that, beginning next month, SugarSync will begin shipping with every Lenovo PC. The service offers consumers five gigabytes of storage free per month and additional storage in $5 increments. Upcoming cloud-based music services from Apple and Amazon don’t threaten the company, according to Robb Henshaw, director of corporate communications, because SugarSync is a cross-platform service. “The big guys are using the cloud to lock people in to their ecosystem, but it’s a multi-platform world,” he said. The company plans to announce a deal with a smartphone maker next month, he said.

Best Buy will begin selling an Insignia-branded Blu-ray 3D player on Sept. 18, a company spokesman told us. Price of the player will be $119 and at launch it will include apps for Netflix, Napster, CinemaNow, Pandora and YouTube, he said. Hulu Plus and other services are planned for the “near future” via regular firmware updates, he said.

Gazelle, seller and recycler of used electronics, announced an iPhone app would be available Thursday that features all the functionality of its website, according to Anthony Scarsella, chief gadget officer. Consumers who want to get rid of old electronics can check from the list of 250,000 products on Gazelle’s website, enter information about the condition of the product and then ship the item to the company in a Gazelle-supplied box. Staffers inspect it and then issue payment based on product condition, Scarsella said. Consumers are then sent money for the products in the form of a check, deposit to a PayPal account, Walmart Prepaid Visa card or Amazon gift card, Scarsella said. Gazelle in turn re-sells the products on its own eBay site. Gazelle is “geared toward upgrades,” he said, but for products that have passed their useful age and have no value, the company works with local “no-landfill” recyclers, he said. Since 2007, Gazelle has worked with 220,000 consumers and taken in roughly 550,000 products, he said. The company does not accept TVs.

Audio company Phiaton is in the process of signing on “a couple of major” national retail chains to sell its products, Akio Strasser, senior manager of sales and marketing, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Phiaton products should be available at those retailers’ stores “by the end of this month,” he said. The company’s products are already being sold at several online retailers, including Amazon, BestBuy.com, Buy.com, Newegg.com and Overstock.com, he said. Brick-and-mortar stores are now limited to “mom-and-pop” shops and airport locations, he said. The company is targeting “audiophiles on a budget” for products that include its “flagship,” $249 MS 400 headphones that have been out for a couple of years and the new PS 20 BT Bluetooth stereo “half in-ear” headset that was announced in the U.S. Wednesday, he said. The earphones will ship in the U.S. at $149 Oct. 1, he said. They already shipped in South Korea about a month ago and were “flying off the shelves” there, and they'll go on sale in Europe in early October, he said. The PS 20 feature 14.3mm drivers, Bluetooth 3.0, and “Echo-Off” noise reduction technology that Phiaton said enables background noise to be “virtually eliminated” during phone calls.

Logitech showed its new wireless boombox, shipping now at $179.99. The device enables a smartphone or tablet to be used as a touch-screen player and remote control to wirelessly stream stereo audio, Logitech said. It was designed to be compatible with the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, Logitech said. Logitech also announced a $69.99 wireless headset, also shipping this month, but didn’t show it at the event. That device was designed for the Apple devices, as well as other Bluetooth devices, Logitech said.

Smartphones are “taking a bite out of” the camcorder market, as well as the digital camera market, Mitchell Glick, Canon product marketing manager for camera and video, told us. Image quality on iPhones and other smartphones is “certainly progressing,” some reaching 8 megapixels, he said. But he said the image quality on smartphones still can’t match that of a good digital camera, which offers superior low-light performance and image stabilization. The image sensors on smartphones are much smaller and the quality of their lenses are inferior, most not even using glass lenses, he said. Total 2011 U.S. digital camera sales have been about flat with last year, with point-and-shoot cameras about flat but SLR models growing, he said. Canon has been “doing well,” and was No. 1 in point-and-shoot and SLR models in August in the U.S., just ahead of No. 2 Nikon, he said, citing NPD data. Canon was No. 1 in total digital camera sales in the U.S. in August, with a 26.4 percent share of units and 39.4 percent share of revenue, NPD confirmed Thursday. Nikon was No. 2, with a 22.4 percent share in units and 28.7 percent of revenue, while Sony trailed with 18.3 percent of units and 14.4 percent of revenue, NPD said. Samsung had a 6 percent unit and 2.7 percent revenue share, while Kodak had a 4.8 percent unit and 1.6 percent revenue share, NPD said.

Like Canon, Nikon demonstrated several recently introduced cameras Wednesday but didn’t announce any new models. Nikon showed publicly for the first time the $499.95 10.1-megapixel Coolpix P7100, $379.95 16-megapixel Coolpix AW100, $429.95 14.1-megapixel Coolpix S1200pj with a built-in 20-lumen projector, and $329.95 16.1-megapixel Coolpix S8200 with a 14x wide angle zoom, a spokesman said. It also showed a budget version of the latter model, the $229.95 Coolpix S6200 with 10x zoom. Each ships in October, the spokesman said.

Several game publishers exhibited new titles at the event. GameMill Entertainment showed Country Dance 2, shipping for the Wii Nov. 1. The company is also “working on some Kinect stuff” for the Xbox 360’s motion control sensor, Brian Kirkvold, executive producer and studio director, told us. But it has no plans to support the PlayStation Move for now because it “doesn’t have a critical mass” yet, he said. GameMill also won’t field any games for the 3DS this holiday season, he said. The consumer “has so many choices” now that it’s “hard to know which direction” to go in supporting new platforms, he said. GameMill made an iPhone game already, in 2009 -- DQ Craze -- but he said “it got lost in the shuffle” because it’s hard to get noticed amid the thousands of choices on the iOS platform. GameMill is, however, working on a licensed property for the iPad that will be out this holiday season, he said. He declined to identify it.

Kirkvold said he hoped the recent 3DS price cut would help sales of the system this holiday season. The company is trying to see if making a game for Android devices would be worth the cost, but a problem that GameMill faces is that it uses the Torque engine to make iOS, Mac and PC games and that isn’t compatible with Android now, he said. “We need to find” a viable Android engine that’s low-cost, he said. The company is still weighing its options for next year and is “seriously considering” support for the coming Wii U, but it’s assessing the cost, especially for developing games using the console’s new tablet controller.

Electronic Arts demonstrated the PS3 version of Battlefield 3 from its Digital Illusions CE (DICE) studio, shipping Oct. 25. The game, in development for three years, will also be released for the PC and Xbox 360 on the same date. A version for Apple iOS devices will follow in December, a spokesman said.

Majesco Entertainment demonstrated Zumba Fitness and Twister Mania for the Kinect. The latter game’s title was changed recently from Take Shape after the publisher licensed rights to the game Twister from Hasbro, said Liz Buckley, Majesco vice president of marketing.

Nyko showed final packaging for the Zoom range reduction lens for Kinect. The $29.99 lens, which started shipping early this week, clips onto the Kinect sensor and reduces the required playing area to use Kinect by about 40 percent, Nyko said (CED June 14 p5). Xbox 360 players are now required to be 6-8 feet away from the sensor for it to work properly, which is difficult for gamers with small rooms, Nyko said. Initial retail pickup for Zoom was “great,” a Nyko spokesman said. This was the first time that Nyko launched a product simultaneously at retailers across the U.S., he said. Zoom, like other new Nyko products, is being packaged in recyclable cardboard packaging instead of plastic, said Marketing Associate Michael Quiroz. The company is also phasing in the new packaging for some older products that aren’t being phased out, he said. Nyko “talked to a lot of our retailers,” who requested different packaging that could more easily be displayed in their stores, he said. Walmart, in particular, pressed for recyclable packaging and a shift away from plastic blister packs, which are also hard to open and sometimes cut customers’ fingers, he said. Nyko also wanted to introduce packaging that would allow it to present more of a “cohesive” look and branding for its products, he said. Each platform was given a different color packaging, with Xbox 360 green, PS3 red and Wii blue, as examples, he said.