Sapphire: determination to sell.

Sapphire, a Hong Kong-based graphics board supplier to international systems integrators, is by no means downcast by the leaner times in the consumer electronics sector, associated as this has become with sharply lower sales in the global downturn.

At CeBIT 2009 in Hannover, Germany from 3 to 8 March the company relied on branded quality to make sales, particularly with a quality international customer base, said Philip Wynn Jones, Event Manager, representing the company at its booth.

His outlook for 2010 is not pessimistic either, despite poor news on computer and software sales: "[this is] due to our good brand with quality support and a low return rate. We are not cutting our marketing, but will likely review it and be more creative, such as compile more surveys."

Fu with Posh Book.

Also from Hong Kong, Forsa was at CeBIT to market its Posh Book, a low cost mini-notebook PC, a netbook. Jay Fu, Product and Marketing Manager said: "it sells best in yellow, and we update the features every two months." The netbook is a departure to Forsa's usual focus, since the company has built its reputation as a graphics solutions specialist, with a manufacturing facility in Dongguan on the Chinese mainland.

For the remainder of 2009, Fu does not expect much demand in either the computer or software fields, but assumes that the lower cost of the netbook as against its competitors (at Euros300 retail) should make the product attractive to shoppers, even in hard times.

Lower-sized CeBIT

CeBIT was slimmed down but still remained the world's largest electronics show, according to the organisers. It was indeed no surprise that a number of exhibitors, including important ones like Toshiba, decided not to attend this year's event.

Lower number of visitors.

Numbers of exhibitors and visitors shrunk by a quarter with expected losses in revenue buttoning the pockets of exhibitors; they dropped to 4,300 from last year's 5,840.

Some larger brands still put on a brave face and showed up, among them IBM.

There were newcomers too. "We heard about the opportunities of CeBIT and came here for the first time. It is worth it, buyers are coming," said Carl Deng from Chinese mainland firm Tidy Power, which offers clean power source products.

During the first three days, Deng collected 100 business cards. He estimated: "10% of the visitors at our stand were from Eastern Europe, 20% from the Middle East, 40% from Western Europe and there were also people from Latin America and Africa."

Deng: many buyers.

Presentation from the sunshine state.

After last year's issues with product piracy, when customs officials and police searched stands at the fair, mediation was the order of the day this time. Two mediators, Xuming Wang and Zhuomin Wu, holding doctorates at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law, acted as intermediaries for European and Asian enterprises at odds over copyright.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger praised CeBIT as the world's largest and most significant fair of its kind. One of the companies accompanying the Governor in opening the partnering sequence was US-based Aberdeen, which arrived to develop a network of distributors.

Aberdeen will return next year, "even if business were to be only half as good as this year," said Trenton Baker, Marketing Manager of Aberdeen. Baker expected the company's ratio of national to international business to change to half and half within the next five years, from just 5% international sales now.

Netbook setting a consumer trend

Netbooks in different sizes.

Carrying through the theme of Forsa's Posh Book, netbooks as a genre were stand-out products in the electronics and telecom sectors. Prices ranged from Euros400 to Euros600 and were available in different sizes with displays up to 12 inches. One example was the Asus Eee PC T91 Netvertible, which was very small at nine inches, weighing 900 grams with a touchscreen that could be re-aligned when the netbook was closed.

It's possible to use the Netvertible while walking through a factory, for example. However, one disadvantage was the tiny batteries which don't allow the device to be used beyond two or three hours.

Windows XP produced the operating systems for netbooks but the Linux system will continue to be delivered with some, such as in the case of the Netvertible. Another new netbook had solid state drives capable of being switched off. So far, no official Apple netbook has become available.

Netbooks were a popular target.

A new car radio was presented by Germany's Blaupunkt as a prototype, capable of receiving tens of thousands of Internet radio stations. The price is expected to be approximately Euros299 (RRP) for Hamburg 600i and around Euros399 (RRP) for the larger New Jersey 600i.

Though sales in Germany were 13% down this year, smartphones were still all important, as demonstrated by the iPhone and the G1, the latter being search engine giant Google's phone featuring an Android operating system and a retractable keyboard (and retailing at Euros1,999 with a T-Mobile contract). Both mobile phones are licensed by T-Mobile of Germany.

Palm PDA is trying to catch up. Marketing remains important to convert the phone into a lifestyle object. Another marketing strategy was to secure smartphones with encryption.

Entering a technology cloud

For many companies, the combination of cloud computing and netbooks for employees might make for lower costs, using UMTS or WLAN, according to experts. Cloud computing utilises distant servers for data storage and management, allowing the device to use smaller and more efficient chips that consume less energy than standard computers.

Cloud computing provides functions that most PCs or other appliances use very rarely and do not need to provide at the user's location. However, the related trends for software service, virtualisation and others grouped under the theme of Webciety, present challenges and opportunities.

GeNUCard to size.

One Achilles' heel for cloud computing is security. And companies are advised to provide their mobile staff with security, such as with GeNUA's GeNUCard (costing from Euros350 retail) which protects the user's communication with the company's network.

The device is simply plugged into the notebook PC and its three central features are a firewall, a VPN gateway and a token function to authenticate the employee. GeNUCard is all ready for IPv6 and it is independent of the PC. It uses its own operating system, running only on the stick.

Webciety's underlying applications sometimes demonstrate weaknesses in sourcecode and entry points, and their compliance can be full of holes, according to some experts.

Such problems are solved by Taiwan's Armorize Technologies. The company presented a package of code analysis for vulnerabilities (hypersource), server-scanning (hyperscan) and attack detection with monitoring, reporting and alerting (hyperguard).

The product is available at a price range for hyperscan of Euros3,000 for 20 scans to the complete package, starting at Euros20,000.

For companies and individual software engineers, membership in the non-profit organisation Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) may be attractive, with a local chapter in Hong Kong.

A global study by GMG (Gibson Marketing Group) registered an increase of 45% of companies who consider cost and time for compliance to have grown significantly. This makes the field an interesting one for enterprises that provide tools for rationalising and managing these requirements. GRC platforms need to manage audits, compliance, risks and policies.

Energy was the subject of many talks and presentations, given CeBIT's Green IT theme. Practically no one, however, paid heed to the other important aspects of IT and sustainability: production and the recycling of waste.

Sunload products.

With energy being - at least potentially - a problem that might be taken care of, the questions of scarce raw materials and toxic waste are much harder to answer, which might be the reason why the industry in Hannover was not the platform for asking. The NGO Germanwatch did, however. Cornelia Heydenreich, in charge of corporate responsibility, said: "in the three-year campaign makeITfair, together with seven European organisations, aims to raise awareness of labour conditions, human rights and environmental hazards in the production of consumer electronics."

According to Sven Tackmann, Head of Sales at Sunload, Germany's solar product producer, solar energy can easily provide the power for mobile phones and other devices. Solar panels on a toting bag (retailing at Euros299) allow a battery to charge inside the bag as well as display the charge status. A trolley, together with an extra large solar panel for charging a notebook will cost Euros798.

from special correspondent Dagmar Boedicker, Hannover