Japan’s Ceatec opens on Tuesday

Japan’s largest annual IT show, Ceatec, begins on Tuesday and is expected to provide a platform for the country’s technology vendors to showcase their latest products and prototypes of devices yet to go on sale.

The show runs from Tuesday until Saturday at the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba, just outside of Tokyo, and will this year feature around 700 companies, according to an estimate from the organizers. The show attracted 182,000 people last year and a greater number are expected this year, the organizers said.

Information from exhibitors has been trickling out ahead of the show providing a taste of some of the technologies visitors can expect to see.

One of the headline technologies of the show this year is expected to be blue-laser-based video disc systems, which are likely to succeed DVD discs for high-definition content. With the commercialization of HD-DVD due before the end of this year in Japan and Blu-ray Disc players expected on the market next year, competition between the two formats is already fierce.

Visitors can expect to see the latest prototype players and most recent developments in the two formats, such as Java support, just one of the bells and whistles being added in the battle to capture the attention of consumers.

Toshiba has promised to show a slim-line HD-DVD drive that’s suitable for integration into a notebook computer. The 12.7 millimeter high drive can read HD-DVD discs and also read and write DVDs and CDs, Toshiba said.

Also in the high-definition arena the major TV manufacturers will be showing their latest and greatest flat-panel televisions. Last year highlights included Sharp’s 65-inch LCD TV and a prototype screen based on SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display) technology from Toshiba and Canon.

This year Sharp is promising a hard-disk drive-based digital recorder that can record two HDTV programs at once and is ready to record just one second after being switched on.

Prototype cellular telephones boasting a number of new features should be numerous if previous Ceatec events are any indication.

Cell phone network operator KDDI will be showcasing portable fuel cells, it said. The company is working with Hitachi and Toshiba in development of fuel cell-based chargers for cell phones. Early results of the work were on display at last year’s Ceatec and this year more advanced versions are expected to be shown. KDDI hopes to put the first commercial products on sale before the end of March 2006.

Japan is soon to begin terrestrial digital broadcasting to cell phones so devices compatible with that service can be expected.

In addition, there’s a whole side of Ceatec that isn’t about finished consumer electronics gadgets. In several halls, component makers display their latest wares and developments. Among items on display this year will be a flexible optical circuit board from Matsushita Electric Works that can be wrapped around thin columns. Seiko Epson Corp. has also said it will show a flexible memory chip for use in flat-panel displays.

Ceatec was created in 2000 through the merger of the Japan Electronics Show and Com Japan, and in its first year it attracted 172,053 visitors. In 2001 there were 158,830 attendees, in 2002 a total of 173,021, and in 2003 a total of 191,528. Last year it attracted 182,490 visitors, according to organizers.