This year’s CeBIT high-tech exposition will open its doors on March 4th. This year there will be more than 5800 exhibitors from 77 countries. This fair is an important indicator to businesses as to which technologies will be leading in the near future. According to the German Association of Information Management, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM), this year the focus will be on green IT, internet telephony and mobile data services. more…

According to Eurostat, in the year 2007 there were about 1.6 billion overnight stays registered in hotels and similar places of accommodation in the EU27 which is 3.1% more than in the year 2006. The number of overnight stays by domestic tourists increased by 3.6% to 856 million while that of foreigners rose by 2.4% to 722 million. more…

According to the Federal Statistical Office, about 15,400 students of informatics successfully finished their courses in the year 2006. This is an increase by 13% in comparison with 2005 and more than twice the number of graduates in the year 1997 (+117%). more…

In Brussels last week three European companies were honoured for their outstanding achievements in the categories „growth“ and „cross-border mergers and acquisitions“ with the “Best of European Business Award”. The winners are AXA, an internationally operating insurance conglomerate, PKN Orlen, who are one of the biggest mineral oil companies in Europe, as well as http://www.galpenergia.com/, who are the leading energy company of the Iberian Peninsula. The special prize for “Green Business” was awarded to BASF. more…

According to the European Statistical Office (Eurostat), the number of orders received by industry in the Eurozone (EZ13) fell by 3.6% in December 2007 as compared to the previous month. In November 2007 order intake had still increased by 2.0%. In the EU27 incoming orders decreased by 1.2% and 0.2% in December and November 2007 respectively on the previous months. In comparison to December 2006 the number of incoming orders increased by 2.1% and 7.5% in the Eurozone and the EU27 respectively in December 2007. more…

419 companies generated a turnover exceeding 1 billion Euros in the year 2006 which is an increase by 35 businesses in comparison with the year 2005. All together these companies generated a turnover of almost 1.6 trillion Euros which amounts to 32.3% of the total turnover of all taxable companies combined. These figures were published by the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden. more…

According to a current analysis carried out by the Association for Information Management, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM) print media have lost readers in recent times while the number of readers of news portals increased considerably in the year 2007. Thus, the twenty most frequently used news portals were visited 3.8 billion times which means that these could increase their popularity by on average 19% in the second year in a row. more…

According to the Federal Statistical Office, the index of production costs for industrial products was 3.3% higher in January 2008 than in January 2007. In comparison with December 2007, this index increased by 0.8%. The most driving force behind this increase were energy prices which increased by 5.9%. Without taking into account the energy price rises, production costs increased by 2.5%. more…

A very lucrative business model are partner finding sites on the internet. The operators of such sites were able to increase their turnover by 29% in the year 2007. Germans spent 85 million Euros on finding a partner online. This was revealed by a market study carried out by the Jupiter Research market research institute. For 2008, another increase to 103 million Euros is predicted. more…

The German vocational system is renowned internationally due to its combination of practice-oriented training in companies and high-quality training at vocational schools. Therefore, in many countries all over the world many people want to co-operate with German experts in the field of training and further education. The international market for the export of education is a suitable platform for this given that it has the potential to generate a turnover of about 40 billion a year. more…