2024 Berlin International Consumer Electronics Show
The consumer electronics industry is ever-changing, and exhibitions are the stage where one can grasp current technological trends and witness brands showcasing their skills. From the beginning of the year's CES to MWC, and then to the domestic AWE, exhibitors and attendees from around the world gather to discuss the future together. From September 6th to 10th, 2024, the Berlin International Consumer Electronics Show (IFA 2024) officially took place. As one of the most important consumer electronics exhibitions globally, it serves as a compass for the technology industry in the second half of the year.
It is worth mentioning that this year marks the 100th anniversary of IFA, bringing together over 2,200 exhibitors from around the world and showcasing a grand display of AI scene applications. From smartphones to PCs, and then to household appliances such as televisions, washing machines, and cleaning appliances, the integration and implementation of AI technology have provided new opportunities for consumer electronics to shine and be re-ranked.
In the PC field, Qualcomm is challenging Intel and AMD. At IFA 2024, we saw a variety of new products featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus (8 cores). Mobile products also have new focuses. While various manufacturers showcase new forms, users are more concerned about the practical applications of AI. After all, even Apple, which is usually slow to adopt new trends, has embraced AI. Without discussing AI applications, there will be no traffic or sales.
Moreover, as a platform for promoting high-end markets in Europe and America, IFA once again positions Chinese manufacturers in the spotlight. From the ID badges at IFA 2024 to the large brand posters outside the venue, as well as the cutting-edge technologies unveiled on-site, the presence of Chinese brands is evident. Years of localization efforts and technological leadership have given more Chinese brands the confidence to establish a high-price label in the European market, transitioning from relying on cost-effectiveness to pursuing higher profits.
AI home appliances accelerate implementation, with scenario-based applications becoming key themes
This year's IFA exhibition brings together over 1,800 global exhibitors from 139 countries, with an expected attendance of over 180,000 visitors. Looking at the global exhibitions held this year, AI is undeniably the core and an unavoidable topic. In the past, brands at IFA may have showcased new cutting-edge technologies and concept devices to demonstrate their technological research and development capabilities. However, this year, without AI, it is unlikely that many visitors would linger at the booths.
This year marks a significant year for the practical application of AI, which differs from the previous year and is a key factor driving the desire to exhibit and attend consumer electronics exhibitions. Home appliances, a category with lower usage frequency compared to smartphones and PCs, have relatively slower integration of AI. Nevertheless, at IFA 2024, we have observed that from televisions to refrigerators and washing machines, AI has been applied in more scenario-based settings.
For instance, LG Electronics has adopted a scenario-based approach in its exhibition, creating a panoramic &#34;AI Home&#34; blueprint consisting of 8 independent spaces. These spaces include LG's AI smart home entrance, second youth home, smart green home, cozy home, joyful home, LG AI exhibition area, AI core technology exhibition area, and sustainable leisure area
Samsung, which early on shouted &#34;AI for All,&#34; showcased its latest lineup of artificial intelligence home appliances, including smartphones, TVs, washing machines, and more.
LG Booth
In addition to AI functions and experiences that can interact directly with users, some products have AI assistance behind the scenes to enhance the product experience, such as improving picture quality. At the Hisense AI Picture Quality Chip experience area, visitors can compare changes in the same source before and after applying the AI Perception Chip to feel the improvement in picture quality in actual application scenarios.
It is understood that the Hisense AI Perception Chip is equipped with a fully customized AI chip architecture for the entire signal control chain, backlight control chain, and large model algorithms such as AI depth of field, AI color, and AI motion, achieving fine control over stereopsis, clarity, color, and smoothness.
Hisense Booth
With the capabilities of AI large models, home appliances are becoming more and more energy-efficient. At the TCL booth, the Blueair P7 new air conditioner uses ultra-energy-saving AI big data model algorithms to intelligently adjust the operating frequency, achieving a 40% energy saving rate.
In the first half of 2024, despite the overall sluggish performance of the home appliance market, the cleaning appliance market still achieved growth against the trend. For the European and American markets, differences in lifestyle lead to a higher penetration rate of cleaning appliances. At IFA 2024, many brands brought products with AI capabilities.
For example, Yunjing released the latest flagship intelligent sweeping robot Freo Z Ultra, which integrates technologies such as TwinAI Dodge obstacle avoidance and Proactive AI DirtSense 2.0. Ecovacs DEEBOT X8 PRO PLUS, based on the AINA 2.0 artificial intelligence navigation model, enables the robot to achieve AI instant mopping function, intelligently identifying stains and responding promptly during operation.
Qualcomm battles Intel, AI Agent phones are coming soon
In this round of consumer electronics revolution brought by AI, in addition to competition between terminal brands, it is also a competition among upstream chip manufacturers. From the performance of terminals, AI PCs and AI phones have proven the market potential, and an industry reshuffle from top to bottom is also unfolding.
Canalys predicts that the share of AI PCs in the Windows PC market will increase from less than 10% in 2024 to 30% in 2025, reaching 50% in 2026. Typically, for PCs, we are familiar with chip manufacturers such as Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA. In this wave of AI PCs, they are also the first to enter the market. However, we also see &#34;new forces&#34; like Qualcomm actively laying out AI PCs and gradually challenging the positions of traditional manufacturers such as Intel and AMD, as seen from the performance at IFA 2024
Before the official start of the exhibition, Intel and Qualcomm successively released their latest AI PC chips. Intel introduced the Core Ultra 200V series processor, with a total platform computing power of 120TOPS for CPU, NPU (Neural Processing Unit), and GPU, reducing overall power consumption by 50%, bringing low-power performance to AI PCs equipped with this processor.
During IFA 2024, many PC manufacturers including Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Dell, etc., launched new products equipped with the Core Ultra 200V series processor. Lenovo also collaborated with Intel to launch the Aura Edition series, providing diverse AI functions and experiences.
ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition
On the other hand, Qualcomm introduced the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core platform to expand its Snapdragon X series product portfolio, further reducing the chip cost of Snapdragon PCs. Qualcomm's President and CEO, Amon, stated, &#34;PCs are undergoing a reshaping. Copilot+ PC powered by Snapdragon X Elite integrates AI throughout the entire system. Windows Copilot+ PC empowered by Snapdragon chips is collectively defining the personal computing experience, creating applications for the next generation of PC products.&#34;
Looking at the new AI PC products released at the exhibition, there are also many devices equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core platform. The power consumption advantages brought by the Arm architecture perfectly compensate for the &#34;deficiency&#34; of AI PCs in battery life. Lenovo introduced the IdeaPad Slim 5x and IdeaPad 5x 2-in-1 (Xiaoxin 14 Snapdragon AI Yuanqi Edition) equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core processor, providing enhanced AI-driven productivity and versatile design. Honor also officially launched its first AI PC based on the Snapdragon X Elite platform at IFA 2024 - the Honor MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon Edition.
Honor MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon Edition
Amon stated that the new X Plus platform offers 61% higher performance than competitors at the same power consumption level, and the power consumption required by competitors at the same performance level is 179% of the Qualcomm platform. After adopting this platform, OEM manufacturers are expected to lower the price of Windows 11 AI+PC products to $700-900.
In addition to AI PCs, AI smartphones are also a major focus of current AI terminal applications, with brands like Samsung showcasing their latest products at IFA 2024. From the current experience of AI smartphones available on the market, most are still limited to drawing, elimination, and simple summarization. Consumers are more eager for an intelligent entity, just like what Apple's AI demonstrates
Recently, Honor announced new developments regarding intelligent agents at IFA. The Honor AI Agent will be commercially available on the next generation of Honor flagship, the Honor Magic7 series. Unlike Apple's approach of creating AI agents within a closed ecosystem, Honor is committed to creating an AI agent in an open ecosystem that can perform operations across three-party applications.
Honor believes that an open ecosystem, user-centric approach, and privacy and security are the keywords of the mobile AI era. To maximize the user value presentation of the AI Agent, it must possess four core capabilities: &#34;natural language understanding and computer vision,&#34; &#34;user behavior learning and scene environment perception,&#34; &#34;intent recognition and decision-making capabilities,&#34; and &#34;intra-application and cross-application operations.&#34;
The specific commercial time for the Honor intelligent agent is currently unknown. From Honor's own statements, the open concept will indeed provide users with more comprehensive services. However, how to address privacy and security issues, and whether users are willing to share their privacy data, are challenges that need to be resolved.
Conquering the European and American markets, Chinese companies once again take the lead
In the century-old IFA exhibition, which has witnessed the evolution of consumer electronics, the stage has also seen a change in the main players. Forty-four years ago, the first Chinese home appliance company participated in IFA, and now, the proportion of Chinese companies participating in the exhibition has exceeded 80%. Moreover, in terms of booth size and leading-edge technology, Chinese companies are at the core of the exhibition. This year, TCL showcased its cutting-edge achievements in technology breakthroughs and upstream and downstream collaborative innovation for the first time, with an exhibition area of 2662 square meters.
As mentioned earlier, IFA mainly targets the European and American markets, which are high-end markets that Chinese companies want to capture. From the current results, many Chinese companies have already established a foothold in Europe and America, leveraging a global localization strategy to establish a certain influence in the current market.
Currently, going global has become a must-do task, but going out not only means selling products overseas but also establishing research and development, brand, marketing, and production based on the local market, linking with the domestic supply chain to accelerate globalization.
According to information from the Titanium Media APP obtained from TCL, during the process of localizing with European consumers, they have been collaborating with top global sports IPs. In 2024, TCL will sponsor five top national teams to compete in the European Cup, becoming the official partners of the national teams of Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Slovakia. At the IFA 2024 exhibition, TCL also specially invited Spanish legendary football star David Villa to interact with the audience up close.
In Poland, TCL has also established a factory. As of 2023, it has invested nearly $110 million in continuous automation and intelligent transformation in manufacturing, logistics, and warehousing, with an annual production capacity exceeding 5 million units, and can deliver to all European countries within three days. Official data shows that in the first half of 2024, TCL's TV shipments in the European market increased by 40.1% year-on-year, with retail market share ranking in the top two in France, Sweden, and Poland, and in the top three in the Czech Republic and Spain
Not only TCL, but also more Chinese companies are leading the way in high-end markets in Europe and North America. Among them, Yunjing has risen to the second place in the high-end intelligent floor sweeping robot market in North America; in Europe, Yunjing ranks fifth in the high-end intelligent floor sweeping robot market in Germany and top three in the Italian market.
In the first half of 2024, XGIMI ranked first in the household projection market sales in France. In the first quarter of 2024, XGIMI ranked first in projection market sales in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. As of now, XGIMI has entered a total of 450 stores of the top three KAs (FNAC/Darty/Boulangar) in the consumer electronics market in France.
What's even more encouraging is that Chinese brands in the European and American markets are not relying on so-called low prices, but on real product strength, and some are willing to pay a high price. The latest statistical report released by Counterpoint shows that in the first half of 2024, the sales volume of large foldable smartphones in the European market doubled year-on-year, with 70% of the growth coming from Honor. In addition, Honor's sales of large foldable smartphones in Europe increased 22 times compared to the same period last year.
At this year's exhibition, Honor launched the Honor Magic V3 for overseas markets, priced at 1999 euros, nearly twice the price in China, showing confidence in its own products. Chinese brands also have the qualifications to take the high-quality and high-price route in the European and American markets, pursuing higher profits. In general, good products, localized operational strategies, and deep industry chain layout are key to establishing a foothold in overseas markets.
At the centennial milestone, IFA staged one AI show after another. Unchanged is that IFA has once again become the stage for Chinese companies to show off their AI capabilities, leading the way in AI transformation. It is important to note that in today's AI-driven discussions, the competition lies in who can quickly implement applications and provide users with impressive experiences.
However, from IFA 2024, it can also be seen that in the AI revolution of consumer electronics, Chinese brands still have a significant gap in underlying capabilities such as chip processors, which is a current and future issue that needs to be faced and cannot be avoided. (This article was first published on the Titanium Media APP, Author | Du Zhiqiang, Editor | Zhong Yi)

QCOM

IFA 2024 is held in Berlin, Germany, becoming a showcase platform for AI technology applications. With Qualcomm challenging Intel and AMD, multiple new Qualcomm Snapdragon products are unveiled. Chinese brands once again take center stage at the exhibition, showcasing their strength and technological leadership in the high-end market. The exhibition has attracted over 1,800 exhibitors from 139 countries, with AI technology being the core topic. This year's exhibition will drive new changes in the consumer electronics industry

- The 2024 Berlin International Consumer Electronics Show showcased the dynamic consumer electronics industry trends and brand showcases, emphasizing AI integration in products like smartphones, PCs, and home appliances. The event highlighted AI's impact on reshaping the consumer electronics landscape, with companies like Qualcomm challenging traditional players like Intel and AMD in the PC sector.
- Chinese brands took center stage at IFA 2024, showcasing advanced AI technologies and emphasizing their presence in the European market. The event underscored the increasing importance of AI in consumer electronics, driving innovation and competition among global players.
- Despite the focus on AI applications, challenges remain for Chinese brands in areas like chip technology, signaling the need for continued advancements to compete effectively in the evolving consumer electronics market.

IFA ignites a new AI battle: Qualcomm vs Intel, Chinese companies firmly in the lead | IFA 2024