Does the crisis end? - CeBIT 2010

The world's largest trade fair for IT and telecommunications was held in Hanover between March 2 and 6, 2010. 4157 companies represented 68 countries. For comparison, in 2009 there were 4292 exhibitors, in 2008 - 5800.
Over 100 companies returned to the fair after last year's absence, including AMD, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Siemens. Over 300 other companies came for the first time - among them Google and Amazon. So the statistics seems to be rather optimistic, the decline in the number of exhibitors this year amounted to only 3%, while in the last year was as high as 25%.

Unfortunately, appearances can be deceptive.
Four large exhibition halls were closed, many stands did not have commercial character - the exhibitors took part in the event only because of subsidies. Plenty of space was occupied by exhibitions highlighting artistic achievements (International Forum Design). The production crisis in Europe had been evident for many years, this year's fair confirmed another trend - for many world corporations Europe is no longer a priority market.
Due to bureaucratic barriers to the adoption of standards, many technologies still cannot be used on our continent. This applies, for example, to mobile TV, there are considerable delays in HD television, but also in fiber optic technology.
For this reason, Samsung - the leader in new technologies which presented a lot of new products at CES in Las Vegas - did not have its stand at CeBIT. Many other large companies were represented only by their German or European subsidiaries.

The central theme of CeBIT 2010 was "Connected Worlds"
Under this concept, there have been set aside the most promising fields of technology and their applications:
  • Connected Living - use of telecommunications and information technology in the household;
  • Broadband World - technical solutions based on broadband Internet access;
  • Webciety@CeBIT - a new approach to building websites;
  • Destination ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) - issues related to navigation, traffic control, security, telemetry;
  • RFID - logistic systems, identification and access control systems based on radio technology;
  • TeleHealth - use of communication techniques for remote diagnostics and health monitoring.
Even critics of CeBIT agree that no other trade fair reflects so well the latest market trends in this field of technology

IT industry is faring relatively well. It currently implements solutions based on "cloud computing" - that is a model based on the use of services supplied by outside companies - advertisement of IBM

Observation of this year's stands allows to form the opinion that we have another year of stagnation in telecommunications. New mobile technologies, particularly 4G, were still shown in the study phase


Asus quickly implements innovations - the displayed motherboards aroused the curiosity of visitors

Highly innovative TP-LINK company, launching tens of new products a year - after the series of "n-lite" access points (150 Mb/s) it presented the next generation of wireless products compliant to "n" standard, with transmission speeds up to 450 Mb/s


FTTH fiber optic boom begins (?)

The cabinets of modern telecommunications systems resemble computer centers - view of Alcatel's solution. Wireless devices are increasingly powered from solar panels

World Championship in computer games which took place during the fair attracted a large audience. The event was supported, among others, by "Nerd FM" radio station

Google showed cars used for taking photos for Street View application

A breakthrough, similar to Google Adwords in advertising, can be the Amazon Web Services computing platform presented at this year's fair, delivering a set of services for data storage and processing


E-readers and tablets with this function will revolutionize the book market

Mobile (pocket) projector with HD camcorder

Phone "reading" words from the electrical voltage signals created by the contraction of muscles during speaking - one of developments of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory of the Institute for Anthropomatics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Instant interpreter of the speech e.g. for application in phones - another project of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Consumer electronics seems to be overwhelmed by 3D solutions

Variety of solutions using glasses announce widespread adoption of this technology in the near future


Recording of 3D images requires double cameras - a camera from Fraunhoffer Institute

3D TV is the future of imaging, however live natural images always have a large group of supporters...
Europe is sleeping, or resting before a jump?