Samsung, LG tension adds spice to Home show
- — 04 November, 2005 15:21
A little bit of argy bargy between two fierce home entertainment rivals has added some spice to this year's National Home Entertainment Show.
LG has turned its back on Samsung by walling off its exhibition stand, displaying the back end to Samsung.
The two manufacturers are situated side by side and occupy the two biggest stands at the show.
"I'm a bit annoyed actually," said Samsung television and audio product manager John Fragiadakis. "But I think it's a bit of payback."
At a previous exhibition this year, Samsung had diverted LG onlookers to its stand by placing a large projection television in direct view of the LG stand, Fragiadakis said.
However, LG audio visual category manager Darren Globe denied that his stand was serving any insidious purposes.
"What we were really trying to achieve was to create these environments that represent people's rooms at home," he said. "To have a room you need three walls and it just so happens that the back is facing Samsung."
The LG stand has four different rooms which each showcase the company's audio visual home entertainment setups. The Samsung stand has more an open floor design with similar products.
Fragiadakis disagreed with the layout of the LG exhibition and preferred to leverage on Samsung's experience from last years' show.
"Last year we had room-oriented displays, but with our larger stand this year, we realized that the best course was to make it as inviting as possible to consumers."
Fragiadakis said that people need to feel welcome to walk in and out without feeling like they are intruding in someone's space.
Despite their differences both manufacturers were happy with the friendly competition and expected a positive turnout from the public.
"Samsung is right next door and they've got products that they think are stronger than ours and we've got products that we think are stronger than theirs," said Globe.
Fragiadakis agreed with Globe and said that if attendance is as good as it was last year, then both manufacturers would be kept busy all weekend.
The show is open till 5pm tonight and 10am-6pm on Saturday and Sunday. Entry is $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and free for children. Seniors who attend today will be admitted for free.
More information can be found at http://www.entertainmentshow.com.au/
The National Home Entertainment Show is presented by IDG, publisher of this site.
