Finnish company Golla makes mobile phone bags. Many, many mobile phone bags.

(Photo: Niclas Mika)

As we reported, the race between competing formats for future DVDs appears to be wide open. Judging by this photo of a Sony Blu-ray player on display at CeBIT however, if anyone can come up with an HD DVD player that consumers can actually touch then that format may have a leg up.

(Photo: Niclas Mika)

The Samsung Q1 Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) which was revealed with the Microsoft ‘Origami’ project.

Christian Morales (left), Vice President Sales and Marketing Group, General Manager Europe, Middle East and Africa for Intel, and Bill Mitchell, a vice president at Microsoft, holding the first Ultra Portable Personal Computers, or UMPCs.

Photo taken with Sony Cybershot. Reuters/Lucas van Grinsven

Reuters Reporters Matt Cowan and Lucas van Grinsven report on Origami as the story unfolds at CeBIT.

• Video: Part 1
• Video: Part 2
• Video: Part 3

How do you stand out of the crowd when everyone makes cool flat television? You make them look cooler, like the design-award winning Neovo TV which hovers on an elegantly folded strip of metal.

In the ferociously competitive consumer electronics industry, where the components inside the products are too similar to distinguish products from each other, design is becoming ever more important. This is why Korean challengers of the Japanese consumer electronics elite have hired hundreds of designers around the world in recent years.

And what if the cool factor does not work for you? Well, you can always make your TV look like a rabbit.

If you don’t know by now that the soccer World Cup finals will be held in Germany in three months then you are either a hermit without cable, or a citizen of a country where football refers to a sport where using your hands is the preferred way to pass the ball rather than a sure way out the game.

At CeBIT football, or soccer, is part of almost every other megabooth. Mobile phone maker BenQ Siemens laid out a pitch where visitors can practice their passing. At one of the many Samsung booths, visitors can relive the ultimate challenge of a penalty shoot-out.

The World Cup in June will be broadcast in both high definition television as well as digital mobile television signals. Technology, media and telecoms companies expect it will kickstart a wave of product renewals by consumers, ranging from HDTV sets and new cell phones to personal video recorders and DVD machines. Of course as two Xbox360 gamers show here, there will always be football video games to take up the time between real-world matches.

These three pictures are of objects you might not expect to see at the world’s biggest electronics trade fest. They’re here to teach the geeks visiting CeBIT something about “good design”, or more specifically in this case “Universal Design”.

The objects are on show at the stand of International Forum Design, a respected design group that hands out awards at CeBIT every year. Universal Design is a school within IFD which promotes the design of objects in such a way that they can be used by everyone, young and old, fit or not.

The sink, (top left) although it doesnt shout it from a distance, can be used easily by people in wheelchairs. The bowl (right) has a clever rim which allows even people with shaking hands to scoop up the vermicelli in their soup. The measuring bowl (bottom left) can be read from the top, so you no longer have to lift it above your head to read it and risk spilling egg yolk down your neck.

The radio (also left) falls into the same clever category, says Thomas Bade, a Universal Design partner from hannoverCare. It’s not just retro to be retro, but the big tuning knob is the perfect intuitive user interface. It’s a pity that grandpa and grandma never realized they were enjoying Universal Design “avant la lettre“.

Stay tuned to this link this week as Reuters correspondents blog the annual CeBIT technology fair live from freezing Hanover Germany.

CeBIT, which runs from March 9-15, is the world’s biggest telecoms and electronics fair. Now in its 20th year, CeBIT expects to attract more than 6,000 exhibitors and around half a million visitors this year, about the same number as in 2005.

One of the eagerly awaited announcements at this year’s CeBIT will be the unveiling of Microsoft’s mysterious Origami device, which has been teased for weeks on a website registered by the company (www.origamiproject.com).