HP unveiled 50 new products at the Connecting Your World conference in Berlin yesterday. Among the products are HP’s TouchSmart all-in-one PC, an Ultra thin Laptop from Voodoo PC and a one-billion colour monitor.

Steve Kleynhans, an analyst at Gartner said “the sheer number of products HP unwrapped Tuesday is unusual in the PC industry but points to the convergence between consumer and enterprise-class systems”.

“I can’t remember any player in the PC industry launching such a broad portfolio of products in a single event in recent memory. I think two factors were at play here. One is the blurring of the lines between corporate and consumer systems. PCs and other devices increasingly span all aspects of a user’s digital life, and as such it makes sense to recognize this in products and the way they are marketed,” he added

He believes that with Apples hosting its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco this week was another reason for such a large showing of products.

“In order to get heard above the din generated by that, you have to make a lot of noise. A large, all-encompassing product launch certainly helps,” he noted.

One of the products that got a lot of people excited is the Voodoo Envy 133 ultra-portable notebook, set to retail at $2,099US. Just 0.7-inches thick and weighing in at less than 3.4 pounds, it offers a 13.3-inch light-emitting-diode display and backlit keyboard, along with an integrated webcam and a multiple gesture touchpad with circular gesture and pinch options.

Wrapped in a carbon fibre casing, the Envy also has an external eSATA optical drive and a high-definition multimedia interface port. The system offers nearly 3.5 hours of battery life.

Richard Shim, an IDC analyst said: “The Envy is an A-letter product in this changing ultra-portable category, where it was all about weight and, to a certain degree, sacrificing performance, small screen and keyboard size. But now with the MacBook Air, X300 [from Lenovo] and the unit from Toshiba, the R500, we’re seeing larger screen sizes in the category, which opens the door for a bigger audience”.

According to Shim HP’s TouchSmart all-in-one PC is a good complement to Envy, because it continues the thin-is-in trend for PCs. The new system, shown yesterday is much slimmer than previous versions and has an improved touchscreen interface.

“The new TouchSmart simplifies the all-in-one design, making it a better fit for the space constrained environments (like a kitchen) that it is designed for. The first product was a good first step, and this product seems to refine the design nicely,” said Kleynhans.

HP’s Dream Colour display comes from collaboration with DreamWorks Animation, and is a monitor that offers a range of more than 1 billion colours – 64 times the colours available on a standard LCD.

Aimed at animators, game developers, post-production film and video types, product designer and those in the graphic art fields, the DreamColor starts at US$3,499. “The new DreamColor monitor also looks very interesting. Although it will only appeal to a relatively small market, it reinforces HPs quality and engineering messages as well as the company’s focus on the digital content market,” Kleynhans explained.

“It’s a pretty big launch. It is recognition by HP that they understand what the consumer wants, and that’s a lot of choice. You have a complete breadth of products from entry-level stuff to innovative design and technology on the high-end. The other thing consumers want are refreshes. It’s becoming very similar to the cell phone market, where you see new designs all the time,” Shim concluded.