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The num­ber of exhibitors at CeBit in 2006 was 6,167….which was about 1% down on the 6,246 that exhib­ited in 2005. No news there then. Except when you start to look at the break­down of exhibitors by coun­try. The num­ber of exhibitors from China increased from 304 to 396. That’s a 30% increase if you’re not so hot at men­tal arith­metic. You might not feel that’s news either. We’re con­stantly reminded that the Chi­nese are poised to take over the world any day now. The People’s Repub­lic is cur­rently the world’s fourth largest econ­omy, sec­ond largest at pur­chas­ing power par­ity, third largest exporter and importer, con­sumes a third of the world’s steel and almost half of the world’s con­crete, So why is it such a strug­gle to name even a hand­ful of Chi­nese tech­nol­ogy brands. Lenovo, China Mobile, China Telecom…….erm? One clue might be that most of the exhibitors at Cebit in 2007 will be com­po­nent man­u­fac­tur­ers. Now I’m fairly cer­tain that the Chi­nese know how to take these com­po­nents and assem­ble them into shiny fin­ished prod­uct. So why aren’t they doing just that and sell­ing them over here? One the­ory is that the Chi­nese don’t get West­ern brand­ing. Another might be that the home econ­omy is boom­ing and there­fore rep­re­sents a bet­ter risk/return than try­ing to mus­cle in on estab­lished mar­kets over­seas. Either way, if you’re plan­ning on vis­it­ing CeBit this March, it might be wise to brush up on your Mandarin.

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