From February 24 to March 1, 700,000 visitors are expected to view the wares of 7,802 exhibitors from 63 countries spread out over an area of 415,000 square meters. Record numbers for CeBIT, the annual fair in Hanover that used to be all about computer hardware and software and has since exploded to encompass countless handheld Net-enabled gadgets, robotic pets and wearable "eDresses".
Futurists have long forecast the "post-PC era", and if half the buzz leading up to this year's CeBIT is based in reality, then the days of being anchored to an immobile workstation just to stay in touch are numbered. The acronym on Europeans' lips these days is WAP - for the Wireless Application Protocol - which allows mobile phone users to access Net data on the run. A handy example: News from SPIEGEL ONLINE is available to customers of E-plus, Germany's third-largest mobile phone company.
Optimists also foresee mobile phone users checking their stocks, balancing their bank accounts, grabbing local restaurant menus and reservations, and of course, shopping. Pessimists don't deny that this is the eventual future, but doubt that WAP is the way to get there.
But before the Internet takes to the air completely, accessing it the old-fashioned way, i.e., via a personal computer, is still a booming activity in Germany - just not quite as booming as mobile telephony. According to Michael Spohrer of the Consumer Research Association in Nuremberg, the number of Net users in Germany has doubled to 15.9 million in the last six months alone. Nearly a third of the country is online, a greater percentage than, say, Italy, but still far behind most of Scandinavia.
The market for that access is pretty much in the hands of two companies. Deutsche Telekom's T-Online controls 55 percent of it, but AOL Europe, propelled by an enormously successful ad campaign featuring retired tennis star Boris Becker, is catching up fast. It currently holds 32 percent of the market.
The German computer and software industry is straining to keep up with demand for its services, and Jörg Menno Harms, head of Hewlett-Packard in Germany, has called on the government to issue 30,000 visas to allow foreign programmers into the country. Economics Minister Werner Müller says the government is considering the request.
"Throughout the entire economy, as well as in the private sector, the Internet will become as common as bread, soap and the telephone," said Müller. "Whether we Germans like it or not," he oddly added. Perhaps he senses a general association in the minds of Germans between the Internet and a rapidly changing economic landscape which has recently seen the first successful hostile takeover of a German firm, Mannesmann, by a foreign one, Britain's mobile phone giant Vodafone.
Gerhard Schröder, then, is a fitting chancellor to officially open CeBIT 2000 at 6 pm on Wednesday. He campaigned on the promise to "modernize" Germany, and while he offered a few mild and vague criticisms of the hostile aspect of the Vodafone-Mannesmann deal, few doubt that he sees a transition from Germany's postwar model of "consensus capitalism" to a society of mobile, gadget-laden, shareholding free agents as part and parcel of the process.
Germany and Europe on the Web today:
The official CeBIT site in English.
"'M-commerce,' the fusion of mobile communications with electronic commerce, is the phrase of the moment." John Schmid's CeBIT overview in the "International Herald Tribune".
Similarly, "PC Week": "From Microsoft Corp.'s portable version of Internet Explorer to Xybernaut Corp.'s 'eDress' collection of computer-based gowns, the resounding theme of this year's CeBIT Fair is that mobile co mputing is the future." The story ticks off a few of the gadgets to be unveiled, including the Palm IIIc Connected Organizer, 3Com Corp.'s first color handheld. Also: Jesse Berst on "How Your Cell Phone Will Rule Your Life".
Stacy Lawrence rounds up the figures on the surging growth of Netuse in Europe for the "Industry Standard". Nifty charts on PC, Net access and digital phone use as percentages of the population of individual countries, who clicks on what, online ad sales and so on.
Clay Shirky in "Feed" on why "WAP may pose the first real threat to the freewheeling internet."
The "New York Times" runs a Reuters report focusing on "where IT is actually growing like crazy" - business-to-business commerce. Also: If Germany's booming, you'll find more evidence of it in Hamburg than in Berlin, reports Roger Cohen. Free registration required
Reuters's Paul Carrel talks to AOL Europe chief executive Andreas Schmidt about his company's deals with mobile phone makers Ericsson and Nokia: "I wouldn't be surprised to see Motorola working with us."
Steve Kettmann in "Wired News" on AOL Europe's plans to hook every single one of Germany's primary and secondary schools up to the Net.
Ruth Sullivan profiles Deutsche Telekom chief exec Ron Sommer in the "Financial Times". Also: Haig Simonian on the election coming up this Sunday in the state of Schleswig-Holstein; Tony Barber on how, when it comes to economic expansion and advocacy for a strong euro, France and Germany are trading places; and Bertrand Benoit on how the Neuer Markt, something like Germany's NASDAQ, "is now turning a German phenomenon into one of European proportions." Free registration required
"Europe is booming and the Germans are in the driving seat," reports Michael Woodhead in the "Times" of London. A weak euro is driving up exports and overall economic growth is expected to increase by 2.5 percent this year. Also: Richard Morrison explains why, after the European Union's Chocolate Directive, "the world of chocolate will never be the same again."
The cover story of the European edition of "Business Week" examines how immigrants "are injecting new dynamism into the Continent's economies, and creating thousands of new jobs. Yet every single European Union government is trying to close its door to almost all new immigrants." A chart shows that Germany, Europe's largest economy, is the main attraction. Also: David Fairlamb on how the new economic climate following Vodafone's takeover of Mannesmann is forcing German banks to restructure.
Deutsche Bank plans to spend a billion euros (about $1 billion) to build up its online business, reports Mark Milner in the "Guardian". Also: Mannesmann chairman Klaus Esser "will join other senior corporate figures advising Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on drafting new rules regarding hostile takeovers in Germany." And Munich-based EM.TV & Merchandising has bought the Jim Henson Company. Daniel Simpson on the deal announced by Kermit and Miss Piggy. Free registration required
"Following the resignation last week of party chairman Wolfgang Schaeuble, the Christian Democrats have split into two rival camps aligned behind Angela Merkel, an eastern German who serves as the party's general secretary, and Volker Ruehe, a former defense minister from the west." William Drozdiak reports in the "Washington Post".
Charles P. Wallace in "Time" on the Schleswig-Holstein elections and the CDU's troubles in general.
Jörg Haider, leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, isn't kidding when he says he and British Prime Minister Tony Blair share a lot of "amazing similarities". He lists them himself in the "Telegraph". Also: Hilary Alexander on Italian designer Guillermo Mariotti's anti-Haider ballgown; Michael Leidig on the latest avalanches in Austria that killed six skiers; and Alan Judd on "the modern biography that Frederick [the Great] deserves," a "tour de force" by David Fraser.
The German tabloids can't get enough of the romance between tennis stars Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. When will they finally tie the knot? BBC tennis correspondent Iain Carter has the scoop, he says: "The wedding will take place on Steffi's birthday which is 13 June."
The 50th Berlin Film Festival may be over, but Mark Rabinowitz's diary is still appearing at "indieWIRE", and don't forget SPIEGEL ONLINE's special coverage of the Berlinale in English with reviews of all the films in the Competition and interviews with directors Wim Wenders and Volker Schlöndorff and actresses Gwenyth Paltrow and Courtney Love.
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