Bitkom significantly raises forecast for german it market

The market will grow by 2.8 percent to sales of 152 billion euros this year, mainly due to telecommunications services, new mobile devices and software, the association said. Previously, bitkom had assumed growth of 1.6 percent. "We have become much more optimistic than we were in the middle of the year," said bitkom president dieter kempf.

The industry is developing much better than the rest of the economy in germany. This will also have an impact on the labor market situation. The largest segment in the industry, with a share of 34 percent, is telecom services such as voice and data services in mobile communications.

In IT hardware, which accounts for 14 percent of the market, tablets are the absolute "shooting stars," said kempf. Telecommunications hardware accounted for 10 percent of the total. Sales of smartphones increased by 43 percent, according to the figures. 23 million smartphones are expected to be sold in germany this year.

Sales increase by 45.7 percent to 7.9 billion euros. Overall, the association expects strong growth in telecommunications of 3.4 percent to 66.4 billion euros.

However, the sluggish expansion of the new mobile communications standard LTE will slow growth again in 2013, said kempf. For the coming year, bitkom expects growth of only 1.6 percent. The federal network agency in particular is currently overstretched in terms of staffing to process the applications for expansion that have been submitted. "This will lead to a backlog of orders.". Following the high level of investment, the telecom companies have had to postpone their expansion plans for the time being.

In the consumer electronics market, there will also be a small decline in 2013 after an increase of 2.3 percent this year. Above all, the business with the major market driver flat-screen televisions is always influenced by major sporting events, which will not occur in 2013. According to the forecasts, revenue growth in this area was expected to decline slightly from 12.9 percent to 12.7 percent.

According to forecasts, the information technology sector will grow by 2.3 percent to 72.8 billion euros. The software market is showing the strongest growth with an increase of 4.4 percent. The tablet market is booming. Sales will rise by 41 percent to 1.6 billion euros, according to bitkom. Even business with traditional personal computers, which has been under pressure for a long time, is expected to decline much less this year: while bitkom was still forecasting a drop of 4.4 percent in march, business is now expected to decline by only 0.7 percent.

Many IT companies around the world are currently suffering from the weak PC market and the economic crisis. Only on tuesday, the world’s largest chip manufacturer intel, which is considered an important barometer of the industry, announced disappointing quarterly results. One reason for this may be that the chips from intel have so far hardly been used in the much sought-after tablets and smartphones.

The entire ITC sector with information technology and communications will employ around 3.6 percent more people in germany this year than a year earlier, according to forecasts. "The ITC companies will create 10,000 jobs this year," said kempf. The association expects to employ 886,000 people in 2012.