Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: foundation who wrote (20176)	3/11/2002 8:03:50 AM
From: foundation	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 197629

CeBIT fair - the last hope for a crisis-hit industry? Mar 11 2002 ---------- "GPRS went over like a lead balloon" during the Christmas season, Viets said. ---------- Hanover (dpa) - Those behind the hugely successful computer, communications and office technology fair CeBIT are not used to having to worry very much. Ever since its launch in 1986, the international showcase has continued to grow and expand into the world's largest fair in the information and telecommunications technology field. Participating companies showed similarly hefty sales and profits. But this year, the times are different. The success-satiated sector has just survived one of the most difficult years ever, according to Willi Berthold, vice president of the German IT industry umbrella organisation BITKOM. This will leave its mark on CeBIT 2002. The number of exhibitors will, at 7,962 from nearly 60 countries, is down by about 130 from last year's figure. And according to Ernst Raue, an executive of the Hanover fair company Deutsche Messe AG, the rented exhibition space and the number of visitors this year will be less than in 2001. He also says the pressure is on the fair to give the IT sector a boost. "Many exhibitors are grasping at CeBIT like a straw and are hoping that a jolt for their branch will be forthcoming from the fair," Raue said. But BITKOM's Berthold expects the mood to be good at the fair: "The signal which CeBIT sends out is decisive for the entire year. If the mood is upbeat in Hanover, it will be important for the entire industry." He predicted that this year's CeBIT will go down in the annals as the "breakthrough fair" after the industry's downturn. "We laid down the foundations last year for further reasonable growth," Berthold said. There were now grounds for "reasonable optimism" for the year 2002. The IT branch can certainly use some optimism, after what happened in 2001. The German market last year, after years of heady expansion, lost all its momentum and scraped through with two per cent growth to 140 billion euros (122 billion dollars). As in the overall German economy, the country's IT branch is now lagging behind the rest of Europe. Last October, the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO) predicted European-wide growth of 6.8 per cent this year to a market of 570 billion euros. In Germany, it was above all in the area of end-user equipment and systems where the market collapsed. Sales of personal computerss fell by 16 per cent, while servers revenues fell lost two per cent. Other areas in telecommunications also suffered: cellphone and end-user equipment makers fell by double-digits. It was only because telecom services companies posted eight per cent growth that the overall telecom sector managed a respectable three per cent rise. "We actually had been hoping for a recovery in the telecommunications field," said industry analyst Alexander Viets of the Nord/LB bank in Hanover about 2001. "This didn't work out." Nor is he so confident about the mobile phone sector in 2002. Cellphone producers will be selling far fewer phones worldwide this year than in 2001. Cellphones with the new mobile phone standard "GPRS" (General Packet Radio Service) "went over like a lead balloon" during the Christmas season, Viets said. On top of this, the mobile phone operators were already hurting from the huge investments made to acquire the third-generation UMTS licenses. Viets says it is now "very questionable as to whether these high spending sums will ever pay off", since UMTS is scarcely suited for winning over a mass market. At BITKOM, however, officials take a different view. There are now around six million laptop computers in Germany which potentially are directly accessible for UMTS. "This is only one example of why UMTS will quickly succeed," Berchtold said. Even if UMTS does not contribute much to overall revenues in the industry in 2002, BITKOM still sees double-digit growth in the sector this year. "A lot will depend on when the economy turns around," Berchtold said. "If this happens as soon as mid-year, then the plus at the end of the year will perhaps be much higher." He notes that in the past, the IT sector had often performed well in the face of economic downturns. "It is especially in times of economic crises that many companies are at work on cost efficiency programs," Berchtold said. "This provides a major boost for software and related services." dpa vs ds ct 100207 GMT Mrz 02 thefeature.com