AIX Show-and-Tell - NEXT GENERATION IFE , IS HE TALKING ABOUT e.DIGITAL !
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Message: volume just jumped about 50k now at 83k ..news coming?
If you read THE LAST PARAGRAPHS OF ARTICLE , IS THIS VENDOR IS
e.DIGITAL !!!!!!!!!!!!
AS usual, the Aircraft Interiors this past week was like an all-you-can-eat-buffet. It was more ground than a team could cover in a week…and we are talking IFE only. As a comparison, the exhibition booths occupied 4 buildings that were approximately one football field square each with IFE and Connectivity occupying roughly half of one building. Interiors, fabrics, hardware, trash compactors, coffee machines, etc all plied for a space on the plane. Airbus was there in force, and interestingly, Boeing was not. Perhaps they did not want to explain why their B787 was a couple years late. While they had reason, they still are in the airplane business and their absence on the show floor was noticeable.
The big entrants are, of course, seats and interiors numbering over 200 booths while IFE and Connectivity garnered around 40. In a show with almost 500 entrants, our corner of the world is small. With IFE selling around $2 Billion per year in revenues, seats alone present a much larger revenue source. The addition of connectivity to the IFE ca tegory will up the ante, and this year it should contribute to a rapidly growing market segment. If one counts sales as deliveries, these numbers should really accelerate next year. Accordingly, connectivity is a growth business as will be the delivery of in-seat imbedded (portable-based) IFE and associated in-seat power. This area is probably the growth area of portable IFE and quite a few vendors were willing to talk about their plans. For example, IMS showed a great 12″ display that we think will be part of their eventual offering. digEcor’s newest digEplayer looked to be a good candidate for the job too.
Another “pseudo-imbedded” system popped up from Zodiac (Sicma). We call them pseudo because the seatback unit really did not come from portable IFE beginnings, it was designed as a stand-alone, distributed content system. By that we mean that the seat hardware is hard disk based with content at each seat. The fiber optic back bone (Head end to seat box fiber and Ethernet to the display) is in the plane for broadcast solutions like map features and content updates. The Zodiac System is now marketed by Monogram (Remember Tom Lee the trash compactor king?) in California. We were knocked out by the GUI artwork, some of the best we have ever seen. They should have won an award for it! By the way, they just sold a few shipsets of hardware to Alia, Royal Jordan. Nice Work! No doubt seats and IFE were a strong point, one that was not lost on us and others. Perhaps there will be more selling partnerships in this area as seat integration is really a big deal. You know the old saying, “Hardware is easy, software is hard, and seat integration is impossible!”
And speaking of fiber optic systems, the folks of Lumexis were there and quick to note their hardware featured fiber-to-the-display from the head-end servers with full interactive control by passengers. Their system is running on US Airways in a demo mode and we saw some great reviews by passengers. Light weight and low power (LOW HEAT, got it?) may just change the way vendors think about next gen IFE.
Speaking of next gen IFE, one vendor talked to us with a hush-hush tone and said, “Watch out for a real change in our IFE- we are looking at a lot of new and different approaches!” OK, that was a paraphrase but here is the message: Nothing is off the table in the next approach to systems. Weight, power and size are all in play as are the types of network distributions, partnerships, and even the possibil ity of outright purchase of other IP, hardware, and even corporate acquisitions. That is our position and we are going to stick with it.
We will have more later but for now, jet lag is calling us for an untimely nap. By the way, if you have not discovered those energy drinks for fighting jet lag, be advised, they work. ZZZzzz!
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