On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

Cisco’s CEO makes it clear why vendors want to focus on India, Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

“This last year,” says John Chambers, “…emerging markets passed the developed markets for the first time in hundreds of years in GDP. In terms of purchasing power, the emerging markets are for the first time bigger than the developed markets. GDP growth in emerging markets is dwarfing that of the developed markets.

“And unlike what occurred a decade or two ago, it is now the emerging countries that are actually leading in technology implementation. We haven't seen that before.”

Gartner confirms these emerging regions will generate IT spending of $1.1 trillion in 2008, and will grow to $1.3 trillion in 2011, becoming a major force of IT growth worldwide.

The CAGR for IT spending in emerging regions for 2006 through 2011 will be 8.5 percent versus 4.3 percent for mature markets.

A BRIC in the a wall of emerging markets, Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) will represent about 39% of all emerging markets’ GDP in 2011.

Africa and the Middle East
The forecast for 2011 IT spending in Africa and the Middle East is $259 billion, up from $182 billion in 2007. Africa and the Middle East are strongly advancing in all IT areas and are narrowing the gap in IT spending with Latin America. The large size of the region, with its relatively lower IT penetration and its engagement in major telecommunication deployments, is making a strong IT trend. This region shows a forecast CAGR from 2006 through 2011 of 77 percent, which is the strongest of all the emerging regions.

Eastern Europe
IT spending for Eastern Europe is forecast to reach $155 billion in 2011, up from $125 billion in 2007. Eastern Europe's growth and dollar transactions are lower than in other emerging regions, as the region is the lowest in population among the four emerging regions. Russia is the largest IT economy in this region, but shows the lowest real GDP among the largest emerging countries, partially because of existing infrastructure. It faces challenges in modernizing business practices, expanding its small business base and diversifying to beyond oil, gas and minerals, which present large IT opportunities for IT providers.

“As IT spending in these emerging markets continues to grow, new opportunities for technology providers will arise. Technology providers need to be aware of the trends and realign their resources and strategies on a regional basis. P

Additional info is available in the Gartner report “Market Trends: Unveiling IT Trends in Emerging Regions." The report is available on Gartner’s Web site at www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=566611&subref=simplesearch.

Ciao, Wimax! The Italian government sells (in auction) 35 licenses for a record of €136.3 million.

Auctions for WiMax in France raised €125.8 million and in Germany €56.1 million. But the big surprise was who actually bought the licenses…

Little-known AriaDSL SpA secured licenses in all Italian regions for a total of €47.5 million. The company is reportedly controlled by Israeli billionaire David Gilo, founder of Vyyo, a company in Georgia (USA) selling wireless high-speed data equipment and connections.

AFT SpA, a company providing WiFi hotspots around Italy, paid €34.4 million for licenses in all Italian regions and became the second-biggest spender.

Surprisingly Telecom Italia only took up licenses in central and southern Italy for a humble €13.8 million.

And Berlusconi's Mediaset media group, Wind and Fastweb all pulled out during the auction bidding..

WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) 3.5GHz radio frequencies were previously used for military communications. Now they can be a solution to the digital divide in Italy, and encourage smaller companies to use internet. At least 7.5% (4.2 million) of Italians remain cut off from broadband access.

WiMax delivers speeds of 3M bits to 5M bits per second for downloads and 1M bits to 1.5M bits for uploads across rural and mountainous areas.

The WiMax auction in France raised €125.8 million and in Germany €56.1 million.

Texas Instruments, perhaps the most underestimated company in our industry, held  its Developer Conference to launch new OMAP chips and showcase innovations.

"I'm more excited today, looking forward at the innovations coming in the next five or 10 years, than I have been in my 25 years with this company," says Mike Hames, TI's Senior VP for Applications Specific Products.

TI thinks these new OMAP chips will let customers invent entirely new products that combine audio, video, and wireless.

The new OMAP platform is based on the market’s first broad offering of the ARM® Cortex™-A8 core “to provide an unprecedented combination of laptop-like performance at handheld power levels in a single chip.”

With more than 4X the processing power of today’s 300MHz ARM9 devices, the superscalar 600 MHz Cortex-A8 core is integrated into four new OMAP35x applications processors.

For one of the examples of what can be done, OMAP customer Slacker (portable internet radio) was showing at the Conference.

“Slacker is radio the way it was meant to be. Listen for free to millions of songs from thousands of artists to create your perfect radio stations. Choose from over 100 expert-programmed stations or create your own with your favorite artists. Share your Slacker Radio stations with friends and play free personalized music on the Slacker Web Player and the full-featured Software Player.”
Slacker Personal radio learns your taste in music and automatically personalized stations just for you. The music is free and with the new Slacker Portable, you can listen to your music wherever you go. www.slacker.com.

OMAP and the Market
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/gencontent.tsp?contentId=36915

The EC objects to TomTom’s €2.9 billion plans to purchase map supplier Tele Atlas. The statement gives TomTom a date (May 5th) by which it will have to come up with remedies to EC concerns.

Once a statement of objections is issued, this can slow the deal process as it creates a formal procedure that must be followed to resolve problems with the deal.
TomTom is anxious to go past hardware where double-digit profit margins could decline. TeleAtlas would also strength its arsenal against competitors.
Tele Atlas supplies online mapping to Google Maps, Nokia and others.
The companies together seek to gather info on traffic flows to create new features such as daily map updates and predicting traffic jams.

Go EC Has No Latitude for GPS Maker