Earlier this week, the International Exhibition Centre in Goregaon, Mumbai, hosted the sixth edition of InfoComm, the annual business fair that focuses on professional-grade audiovisual gear. Renowned tech giants like Philips, ViewSonic, and Samsung were among the participants at the three-day event, which opened on 18 September.
Future-ready projectors, touch-screen displays, video walls and view boards were among the products displayed at the event. The American brand ViewSonic grabbed headlines with their hi-tech latest lineup of products. In conversation with Guardian 20, Eric Wei, senior sales director, ViewSonic Asia Pacific, spoke about the brand’s recent launches. “The M1 Projector is the best product that we have come up with. It sports Harman Kardon speakers and has a built-in 16GB memory. It is made for both general consumers as well as for commercial use,” he said.
The M1 projector also comes with a built-in battery that offers six hours of backup. Its compact and lightweight design makes it easy for users to move it from room to room, and to even use it at some outdoor location.
Eric Wei added, “We have showcased a number of unique products that include interactive flat panels, 4K projectors, touch monitors as well as gaming projectors. India is an important market for ViewSonic because of its size and gross potential. We will keep expanding our team and will continue acquiring revenue in the coming years.”
The catalogue of ViewSonic’s latest launches includes the PX706HD, a full-HD “short throw” gaming projector which comes with a built-in 5W Cube speaker. There’s also the Lamp Free Laser Projector, unveiled at InfoComm, whose special feature is its built-in HDBT receiver. This projector is capable of receiving uncompressed HD video and audio feeds from over 200 feet away via network cable. Another ViewSonic product, worth highlighting, is the TD1630-2, a point-multi-touch monitor designed to bend at different angles as per the user’s comfort. The 55-inch “Video Wall” and the 27-inch interactive flat-screen panel, both by ViewSonic, also generated much interest among the InfoComm crowd.
Muneer Ahmad, business head, ViewSonic India, told us about the challenges they have faced in trying to gain a foothold in the Indian market. He said, “If we talk about the challenges, I would say one of them was to compete with the well-established players in the market. ViewSonic was not a new brand, but some time back, it had left the Indian marked, and had to re-enter. Since India is a price-centric market, we had to keep that in mind while competing. Fortunately, our strengths—quality and service—helped us a lot to get more costumers.”
Another major exhibitor at the event was the Sharp Corporation, a Japanese electronics manufacturing brand. The star product by this brand was its 8K Professional Display, an ultra-high-resolution monitor which offers 16 times the visual capacity of a full-HD screen. The Professional Display Panel is designed using the most futuristic display technology that incorporates a wider colour palette and a higher range for brightness and contrast.
Speaking at the event, Shinji Minatogawa, managing director, Sharp, said, “Sharp is committed to offering quality products to the market, and also to contributing towards minimising the environmental burden. We believe that 8K will revolutionise society, the future of technology and expand various applications all over the world. As a result, we are excited to bring our innovative 8K technologies to InfoComm, India this year”.
Technology on a scale larger than life was something of a theme at this year’s InfoComm. And Samsung really took the cake in this regard, with its LED for Home premium series, featuring display sizes from 110 inches up to 260 inches. The price tag attached to these products is appropriately hefty, starting from Rs 1 crore and going up to Rs 3.5 crore.