Title:
Electronics Industry Hopes for a Reset in 2010
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Economics Report.
See text below
Text:
This year's Consumer Electronics Show opened January
seventh in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event is the
world's biggest technology trade show. More than
three hundred companies presented more than twenty
thousand new products.
The goals are to build excitement, make deals and
get good reviews in the media. Industry sales
dropped eight percent last year during the
recession.
Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics
Association, predicted that one area of strong sales
this year will be mobile phones. That includes
fifty-two million smartphones expected to be sold in
the United States. Smartphones run applications and
access the Internet. Google is launching the Nexus
One -- which it calls a "superphone." This is its
first attempt to sell its own device.
The Nexus One will compete with Apple's popular
iPhone.
Apple is reportedly about to introduce a new digital
tablet. Tablets are easy-to-hold screens that let
you read and watch media or search the Web. An
example is the Amazon Kindle. Like netbooks, tablets
cost less than traditional laptop computers. But
that can also mean smaller profits for manufacturers
and sellers.
Companies like Sony and Panasonic are introducing
new television sets for watching three-dimensional
TV.
A three-D TV costs more than three thousand dollars.
Americans are expected to buy four million of them
this year. Sports broadcaster ESPN and the Discovery
Channel plan to start their own three-D channels.
The Consumer Electronics Show had an area for
companies to demonstrate products that save energy,
reduce waste and use recycled materials. Show
spokeswoman Jennifer Bemisderfer says the
Sustainable Planet Tech Zone was four times bigger
than last year. She says manufacturers are
increasingly interested in the idea of
"cradle-to-cradle" technology. That involves
thinking about a product's whole lifetime.
Interest is also growing in energy management
systems for the home and safe driving technologies
for the car. These include voice-activated systems
that let drivers make calls and send text messages
without using their hands. Other products warn
drivers if they are falling asleep or in danger of
an accident.
And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report.
To post comments or to send us questions, go to
voaspecialenglish.com.
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personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
