No it hasn't. Here is an article that tends to make me positive on Europes manufacturer's.
Wired world edges nearer at Germany's CeBIT fair
Reuters Story - March 20, 1998 18:29
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By William Boston
HANOVER, March 20 (Reuters) - If the world's leading
technology companies attending Germany's CeBIT trade fair are
right, it won't be long before the vision of a wired economy is
a daily reality.
In Europe, where high-tech firms have long been frustrated
by slow growth and trailing the United States, executives see
signs of a coming boom that could help close the gap.
During the first days of the fair that runs to March 25,
one trend became clear: companies are increasingly turning to
the Internet to do business and liberalization of European
telecoms is creating a competitive force driving down prices
and forcing carriers to provide fast, innovative networks.
An International Data Corp. survey, presented at a news
conference by U.S. chip maker Intel Corp. , found that
18 percent of companies in eight major west European nations
were trying to sell products over the Internet last year and 39
percent planned to get into cyberspace this year.
The volume of goods and services purchased online in Europe
would surge to $26 billion in 2001 from $3 billion this year.
U.S. e-commerce would total $22 billion this year and top $155
billion in 2001. Worldwide, the total would hit $28 billion
this year and $223 billion in 2001.
"A year ago, we were describing a technology deficit.
Europe was well behind North America," said Intel Europe chief
Rob Eckelmann. "That is rapidly changing, the gap is closing."
SMALL FIRMS RUSH ONLINE, PC MAKERS FOLLOW
One example is Schuhhaus Eduard Meier, a German shoe
retailer that lets customers view video clips of how it makes
shoes by hand and see available models in 3-D images that can
be turned and seen from all angles.
Another is Rombach und Haas, a German maker of cuckoo
clocks, who turned to the Internet to boost sales. Shoppers
around the world can use its website to view its clocks from
all angles and hear their distinctive chimes before pointing
and clicking their way to an online order.
Like Intel, Compaq Computer Corp . used CeBIT as a
venue to outline its strategy to tap small and medium-sized
businesses. It says this segment of the PC market is growing by
18 percent annually and will represent more than half of the
total PC market by 2000.
Intel, maker of the engines driving the technology railway,
displayed dizzying gains in computing power that also would
open up the market for home and small-office computers priced
under $1,000.
Intel demonstrated a PC with a Pentium II running at 700
megaherz -- more than twice the rate of today's speed king, a
333-megaherz model.
Such leaps in processing power would help to spark a boom
on the Internet and a rise in the world's PC population to more
than one billion in the next few years, from 200 million now.
COMPETITION DRIVES DOWN PRICES, FUELS INNOVATION
The cost of going online has been a huge barrier to the
Internet for many Europeans. But fierce competition since
markets were opened in January is driving down prices.
Germany's new phone companies announced price cuts for
long-distance and mobile phone services and seemed surprised by
the strong consumer response to new services.
"The acceptance on the part of our customers is enormous,"
said Harald Stober, chief executive officer of Mannesmann Arcor
AG & Co. , the main rival of dominant carrier Deutsche
Telekom .
"We are handling five million call minutes every working
day," Stober said.
Each of the three leading rivals of carrier Deutsche
Telekom unveiled plans to start national Internet access
services.
Telekom responded this week by slashing charges at its
online service T-Online and unveiling plans for a massive
launch of Internet telephony services in the autumn, one of the
first of the world's major carriers to do so.
Competition also has led to improved service and is forcing
carriers to meet the surge in demand for network capacity.
Deutsche Telekom outlined its strategy for the next
generation of high-speed digital access and a large number of
manufacturers makers unveiled so-called ADSL equipment.
ADSL stands for asymmetric digital subscriber line
technology, which is designed for personal computers, notebook
computers, set-top boxes, and personal digital assistants.
Jozef Cornu, president and chief operating officer of
French telecoms equipment maker Alcatel Alsthom
, said ADSL would boost Internet access by a factor of
10 to 100 and lead to new services such as video Web sites.
CELLULAR PHONE MARKET BOOMS, MOBILE PHONES HOOK UP TO NET
Ericsson , the Swedish telecommunications
equipment maker, predicted that the number of people
subscribing to mobile phone networks worldwide would swell to
more than 830 million by 2003 from around 200 million by the
end of this year.
To take full advantage of the boom, manufacturers have
added features such as messaging services in the past and are
now hooking mobile phones up to the Internet.
French telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel used the
fair to launch a mobile phone which can transmit electronic
mail, an industry first, and an Internet phone for the home.
HIGH-TECH BEAUTY CONTEST AND JOB SEEKER'S BONANZA
Would-be German bourse debutantes aiming to list shares on
the small-cap Neuer Markt used CeBIT as a high-tech beauty
contest to display their charms to a specialized audience.
Included in the roll call of firms looking to a bourse
listing as a means of raising cash are computer equipment group
CE AG, software firm Brokat GmbH and sections of the integrated
data processing systems group IDS GmbH.
"Certain visitors to the trade fair come to us and the
first question they ask is about the Neuer Markt. Then they ask
us about the company," Juergen Brintrup, management board
chairman of the Bielefeld-based CE Computer Equipment AG.
The CeBIT trade fair also became a bonanza for job seekers
with computer skills, although it probably won't put much of a
dent in the country's 12.6 percent unemployment rate.
Scores of companies hope the computer and telecoms fair
will lead them to badly needed software developers, systems
consultants, support technicians and the like.
"There's no question if you have a good education in high
tech, you would have no problem getting a job in Germany
today," said SAP co-chief executive Hasso Plattner. "But it is
very hard for us to find the right people."
Recent studies have found that each year, 4,000 to 7,000
graduate in this field -- but industry creates nearly 20,000
new jobs for network administrators, programmers and
technicians. |
