INFORMATION SOCIETY: CEBIT 2003 FOCUS ON IT SECURITY.

• Position: Brief Article

The 2003 edition in Hanover of the world's biggest high-tech trade show, CeBIT, will focus in particular on IT security technologies. Due to be staged from March 12 to 19, the event is expected to attract 7,100 exhibitors and 670,00 visitors in spite of the economic crisis. In a statement issued on November 14 in Paris, the organisers said the conditions are dire for information and telecommunications industries and corporate marketing budgets have been scaled down by 30 to 40%.

Ernst Raue, the organiser of CeBIT, says the number of visitors in 2003 should be almost the same as in 2002, when 673,000 turned up (down 18% on 2001). The amount of surface area booked is slightly down, but CeBIT will still feature 397,000 square metres of stands in 26 huge halls in 2003.

The telecommunications and network still have the lion's share with 118,322 square metres of exhibition space but applications and Internet solutions and services account for the largest number of exhibitors (total of 2,884). The number of exhibitors is down once more: 7,100 are expected to show up, against 7,962 last year and a bit more 8,000 in 2001. Some 2,900 of the total number of exhibitors are from overseas, not...