August's coolest gadgets

By Martyn Williams

After an unusally long rainy season, the skies are now blue in Japan and summer has arrived. Everyone is looking forward to several weeks of unbroken sunshine and hot temperatures but some people are already thinking about the fall and the back-to-school season. Not the kids of course. I'm talking about the product planners at companies like Sony Corp. and Canon Inc., who are busy preparing to put new camcorders on sale in time for the end of the holidays.

Why not earlier when the kids are on holiday and people are taking their vacations? I learnt from Sony a couple of weeks ago that the big camcorder selling period in Japan is in the approach to September and the school sports days that are held nationwide. Sales during this period are three to four times normal and way ahead of any other period in the year.

Television has already made the move to high-definition, and home movies are on the way there. Consumer electronics companies are now pushing parents to splash out for HD camcorders to capture little Taro or Megumi running as fast as their legs can carry them to victory on the track. At least that's the image we're likely to see on TV commercials that will soon be starting to push such sales.

In the next few months we're likely to see more and more HD camcorders, especially if Sony is to succeed in its goal: making half of all camcorder sales HD models by the end of this year.

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