Mar 21, 2007, 18:13 GMT
Hanover, Germany - Organizers of Cebit, the annual computing and communications trade show in Germany which has been hurt by the departure of some top consumer brands, said Thursday there had been a gain in attendance compared to one year ago.
Speaking in Hanover on the seventh and final day of Cebit, they said the overall gate had been 480,000, up 10 per cent from a year ago, while the principal target group, trade visitors, had numbered 379,000, a gain of nearly 4 per cent.
The fair has suffered a hit with consumer-electronics makers such as Philips moving to lifestyle-oriented expos, but Cebit remains one of the world's main venues for exhibiting the less flashy digital technology which keeps business and the internet running.
Deutsche Messe, the German company that organizes the fair, said the 2007 fair had featured more conferences than before and provided a venue for negotiations on 11 billion euros (15 billion dollars) in information technology (IT) investment.
Ernst Raue, Deutsche Messe chief executive, said in a statement, the conferences had given fair users a foretaste of the more specialized event next year.
'The new concept has borne its first fruits. The challenges to the digital world are getting more complex and Cebit is going to be more of a conference platform discussing the solutions,' he said.
'We've successfully turned a corner and the 2008 concept is based on this.' The German IT industry federation Bitkom said Cebit's focus would in future be the same as the sector's focus on innovations.
Next year's Cebit, on March 4-9, 2008, is being reduced to six days earlier in March and given a stronger focus on business. This year's fair attracted 106,000 non-German visitors from 100 nations shopping for software and highly technical electronic equipment.
Taiwan, represented by 602 companies, and China, with 471, were a dominant presence among exhibitors at this year's fair, but Russia, as designated partner country, won attention with 170 exhibitors seeking to boost IT exports.
In total, 6,153 exhibitors from 77 nations took part.
Key product areas included 'voice over IP' technology, which replaces traditional phone networks with an internet-based system, satellite navigation, television broadcasts to mobile phones and radio-frequency identity (RFID) tags to track merchandise.
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