Germany has the single largest Information and Communications Technology (ICT) market in western Europe, and the third largest in the world.  Germany's ICT market - including telecommunications equipment and services, computer hardware, packaged software, and IT services - is valued at EUR 136.1 billion in 2002, representing approximately 24 percent of the total western European ICT market. Telecommunications services account for the largest part of the ICT market with approximately 40 percent of total sales, followed by IT services (22 percent), computer hardware (15 percent), and software (11 percent). Packaged software will grow the most rapidly and overtake the hardware segment as the second largest IT market segment in the country. IT services comprised the largest IT market segment in Germany, valued at EUR 29 billion. Computer hardware, including local-area- and wide-area-networking (LAN and WAN) equipment, was valued at EUR 20.5 billion. Outsourcing and e-government are among the few areas driving demand in IT services. The packaged software market was valued at EUR 14.9 billion. there has been a shift from emphasis on customized to packaged applications, as firms seek to benefit from the experience of software developers and to cut costs. Major software and services growth areas are customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), IT security, and e-commerce (mainly in technologies that can speed up sales processes and/or generate rapid cost savings, such as logistics, sales tracking, and e-procurement). Germany's PC and Internet penetration rates are higher than those of the United Kingdom and France,

German systems integrators, value-added resellers, and value-added distributors work generally only with the top three products in each IT market segment and, if they are going to resell U.S. solutions, want to see references from the U.S. market. Despite the more cautious attitudes, quality is still a very important consideration and German firms prefer to buy "the best". 

German companies with more than 100 employees are believed to have collectively spent around EUR 7.3 billion on IT security, approximately EUR 410 per employee. Experts estimate that, during 2003, roughly 10 percent of IT budgets will be spent on IT security.

Major vertical end-users of IT in Germany include the banking, telecommunications, insurance, and automotive industries. There are more than 5,000 IT firms in Germany, the majority of which are medium and small. Despite the large number of companies, with the exception of hardware producer Siemens, software producer SAP, and systems integrator T-Systems (a division of Deutsche Telekom AG), German firms do not play a dominant role as suppliers to the German IT market. U.S. firms are particularly competitive in software, supplying an estimated 60 percent of the German software market

Germany has the largest mobile market in western Europe, accounting for 18 percent of the 310 million mobile subscribers in the region Early in 2001, the number of wireless subscribers in Germany exceeded the number of wireline subscribers for the first time. By the end of 2001, there were 56 million wireless subscribers, compared to 52 million wireline subscribers. Germany's mobile penetration rate of 68 percent is slightly higher than the EU average At 40 percent,

Germany has one of the top Internet penetration rates in Europe, Germany is estimated to be one to two years behind the United States in Internet adoption. Online banking is extremely widespread in Germany. In fact, Germans are the heaviest European users of banking and financial websites, and Germany is much further ahead in the use of online banking than the United States. An estimated 12 million Germans (15 percent of the population) banked online in 2001. Deutsche Bank recently reported that research firms predict this number will grow to between 22 million and 30 million in 2006. -August, 2003

After work in Munich...@ Oktoberfest                                 & hitting the streets near Stuttgart