Jo Beyersdorf, who helps buy computer equipment for Deutsche Post AG's 320,000 employees, is going to the CeBIT trade show with a budget of more than 10 million euros (US$11 million). Exhibitors are hoping there are many more of him.
Computer makers such as Palm Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co are counting on new handheld personal digital assistants with wireless connections to help pull the industry out of a three-year slump.
About 600,000 people are expected to attend CeBIT, which starts today in Hanover, Germany, and runs for a week.
"We're looking for hardware providers on the edge," said Beyersdorf, a business analyst in the German mail service's information-technology department. "I'm looking for companies that support mobile communications for a PDA used by the post for pick-ups and deliveries."
Almost six out of 10 European technology managers polled by Gartner Inc said they plan to leave budgets unchanged this year.
Last year, many companies didn't even spend allotted funds as concerns about the economy prompted businesses to focus on cutting costs, the researcher said.
"Companies in general are not increasing spending and that impacts information technology," Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's head of European research, said in an interview. "We will continue to see a challenging environment for all of the hardware vendors."
The NASDAQ Composite Index is trading at about a quarter of its peak in March 2000. Barring a longer-than-expected conflict in Iraq, Gartner expects personal-computer sales to rise 7.9 percent this year, half the average rate in the 1990s. Dataquest forecast chip sales will rise 8.9 percent this year, less than the 12 percent it predicted earlier. Even that may be too optimistic, executives said.
"We stay very, very conservative, maybe with our projections even below those of Dataquest," said Gerard Kleisterlee, chief executive of Royal Philips Electronics NV.
Mobile-phone makers, computer manufacturers and software developers are pinning recovery hopes on wireless services and products.
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