Greening of CeBIT fails to revive shrinking IT fair

Georgina Prodhan, Reuters 6 Mar 08;

HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - Europe's biggest information technology fair went green this year. The problem was that there weren't many people around to notice.

CeBIT 2008 was a slimmed-down, serious affair, cut back to six days from seven. Formerly sprawling exhibits were corralled into order by theme and publicity stunts banished to the weekend that now comes at the end of the show, not the middle.

The idea was to turn dwindling exhibitor and visitor interest into a virtue by using the lack of gadgety distractions to create a business-like arena where managers could get on with meeting, greeting and checking out the competition.

The result was an atmosphere free of the chaos of previous years but also devoid of excitement, casting a feeling of desertion over the vast trade-fair grounds in the northern German city of Hanover.

"We decided to do product launches globally at CES," said Michael Langbehn, in charge of PR and marketing in Germany for electronics maker Panasonic (6752.T: Quote, Profile, Research), referring to the huge annual consumer electronics show held in January in Las Vegas.

"Then there's IFA, which is a must," he added, meaning the August/September consumer gadgets fair in Berlin that has drawn electronics makers and the German public away from CeBIT.

"And then consider the BRIC countries, which also have their own fairs that are growing."

Like most exhibitors who still elect to come to CeBIT -- this year there are 5,845 of them, 5 percent down from last year -- Panasonic is using CeBIT to explain its less glamorous business-system products to potential clients.

Talk of "solutions" of all kinds -- vertical, digital and security -- abounded at the fair.

Cisco (CSCO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) was one of the few to talk about the problems demanding these solutions as it launched a new Internet router to help cope with a surge in monthly data sent over the Internet to 29 exabytes by 2011 -- equivalent to 144 times all the world's printed matter.

TREE-HUGGERS

CeBIT organizers declared the theme of this year's show to be the environment and built a "green village" to house companies peddling products to boost corporate energy efficiency and reduce toxic waste.

"CeBIT Goes Green -- Big Time" was the main headline of the official CeBIT News on Wednesday, recognizing that "green IT" is a trend impossible to ignore as both energy costs and climate-altering carbon emissions soar.

Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, by far the highest-profile speaker at CeBIT, conformed with the trend by announcing a deal with German energy provider Yello Strom for technology to display electricity consumption on a home PC.

But most journalists were only interested in quizzing him on Microsoft's campaign to buy Yahoo (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) in a bid currently valued at $42 billion.

The information and communications industry has overtaken aviation in terms of carbon emissions believed to cause global warming, accounting for just over 2 percent of emissions, according to research firm IDC.

The picture is complicated, however, by the hidden environmental cost of transporting electronic parts around the world to assemble them where labor is cheap as well as the fact that IT can cut the need for travel to face-to-face meetings.

Environmental group Greenpeace promised a hard look at the green claims of electronics manufacturers, driven more by a need to cut costs than a desire to save the planet.

At a sparsely attended news conference, it singled out products from Apple (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Sony Ericsson (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research)(ERICb.ST: Quote, Profile, Research) and Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research) for praise while cautioning, "It's not enough just to offer a green computer for the tree-huggers."

Greenpeace's "could do better" verdict on the industry -- following a gadget survey severely limited by manufacturers' willingness to cooperate -- could apply to the new-concept CeBIT as a whole.

CeBIT continues in Hanover until Sunday.

(Editing by Quentin Bryar)