Today, the 50th edition of the consumer electronics show IFA in Berlin is starting. Until coming Wednesday, September 8th, more than 1,423 exhibitors are showing consumer electronics and home appliances on the exhibition site. Key themes on display at the IFA 2010 include HDTV, 3D TV, the networked home, TV/internet convergence and mobile media. One of the highlights is the new Android tablet Samsung Galaxy Tab which the manufacturer presented on Wednesday at the SoHo house in Berlin. In the home appliances sector, the focus is on design, ease-of-use and ergonomics. Other important trends cutting across market segments and discussed in conference sessions are digital lifestyles, smart homes, and energy efficiency. Here is some more information for visitors of the IFA 2010 show.

The Android smartphone Samsung Galaxy S I9000 is now available at stores in Germany. Web stores offer it for purchase prices beginning at € 465.00 including delivery. O2 Germany has been the only German network operator announcing the Samsung Galaxy S as being available in its shops at the end of this month. But eventually mobile phone users will find this touch-screen smartphone of manufacturer Samsung at all other network operators’ stores as well. In this article, I am summarizing my first impressions of this phone after having tested it for two days.

There it is: Apple has started selling the iPad in the United States. Again, people were waiting in line to be one of the first buyers of the mobile internet device, even though it seems as if there haven’t been such crowds as on the day the iPhone came out more than three years ago. Apple fans in Germany will have to wait until the end of this month until they will be able to buy the iPad here. While first apps for the new device are already available in the German iTunes App Store, there are only hints that Apple is planning to release the iPad globally on April 24th. Buyers in Germany will probably have to pay higher purchase prices for the iPad than in the US.

Last weekend in Leipzig. Hecticness, disoriented tourists blocking the streets, dressed up teenagers. During this year’s book fair in Leipzig, the city definitely wasn’t the calmest place to be. You could even wonder, why booksellers and publishers always complain about how decreasingly people read. Who needs printed books anymore? Why endanger the rainforests when we could read everything digitised? However, e-book-readers weren’t the most popular thing in Leipzig. Actually, they seemed to be banished to a single hall while the rest of the fairground was completely filled with madness.

From today, the low end smartphone Blackberry Curve 8520 is available at Real supermarkets for EUR 199.00 without contract. That is less than what the operators T-Mobile, Vodafone, E-Plus and O2 Germany ask for: T-Mobile sells the Blackberry Curve 8520 for EUR 229.96 without contract, Vodafone for EUR 269.90, E-Plus for EUR 209.99 and O2 Germany for EUR 249.00.

Aldi is selling an UMTS surf stick to netbook and notebook users for EUR 49.99. The Medion Mobile Web Stick S4011 supports GPRS, EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA for mobile data transmission over a mobile network with up to 3.6 mbps (download) as well as SMS. The UMTS surf stick comes without a SIM lock and there is no SIM card included in the package. Aldi is also offering a prepaid SIM card for the network of operator E-Plus with EUR 10.00 credit for EUR 12.99.

Since Wednesday walking down the streets of Berlin can be pretty disturbing. Black caps with silver apples on the forehead. On the forehead?! Well, running around like a living ad for the super power Apple has apparently turned into an honour. But is Apple’s tablet PC, the iPad, worth getting more media attention than Obama’s speech? At least, the iPad doesn’t look much like a tampon. It reminds you more of an iphone swallowed by a giant iPod touch. But what about the Amazon Kindle’s post-iPad chances of survival? In any case, with the iPad, Apple can’t offer an e-ink-display like the Kindle.

Although the new e-book reader from Sony, the Sony PRS-600 Touch Edition, has been available in Germany since last October, especially ‘professional readers’ aren’t convinced yet. Most agents and editors still use the precursor – the Sony PRS-505. This is a little ironic, because with its new reader model Sony obviously wanted to reach that target group. The new Sony reader’s impatiently expected touchscreen sometimes seems to be more of a mirror than a screen to read pages in a convenient way.