NAB 2006 and the industry in Latin America

The last edition of NAB acted as an index on the behavior of the industry in Latin America: not only the Latin American presence was notorious, but also the suppliers showed great interest in the region.

This year's NAB conference and exhibition had an unmistakable Latin twist. Unlike other years, when after English, Chinese was the most listened to language, in this edition of NAB Spanish or Portuguese were everywhere. It was easy to come across people from TV Azteca, TV Bandeirantes or Telefé. But in addition to representatives of the large media groups, there were independent producers, representatives of universities and small community channels.

We were not the only ones who noticed the strong Latin American presence. Several exhibitors told us about the large number of visits from potential buyers in the region. Mike Knaisch, president of Front Porch Digital, claimed on the second day of the fair to have received between 20 and 30 customers from Latin America. And that its products are aimed at large operations. In the Matrox booth , another example, we happen to come across a presentation of Axio in Spanish. "We organized this special conference for stakeholders from Latin America who wanted to know about the product in their own language," said the presenter, a Matrox distributor in Argentina, recruited for the conference.

Sony organized a special presentation of its products for customers in the region, which took place at a hotel in Las Vegas the day before the official start of the fair. Verite had two suites at the Hilton hotel, where guests could watch demonstrations and rest from the hustle and bustle of the Convention Center.

Within the Latin American presence, it is worth highlighting the importance of our magazine. The 1,000 copies of the April edition of TV and Video that we took to distribute had sold out on the second day. The sales director for Latin America at a major software manufacturer told us that he asked all visitors if they had "done the homework" of reading TV and Video before going to NAB (in reference to our editorial from the April issue of the magazine).).

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Finally, the most significant fact: many equipment and software manufacturers rejoiced in the big business they had done in Latin America last year, and the good prospects for the remainder of 2006.

All this shows that the industry in our region has taken off again and is in a period of growth and strong investment in technology. The consolidation of this trend depends in part on the macroeconomic conditions of our countries and also on the good use we give to new investments. In other words, you have to get the most out of HD.