On the eve of IFA Berlin and with EITO’s Bitkom Research being based in Berlin, we thought we’d show EITO’s latest market figures.
But we never expected the negative result: EITO suggests Digital CE in the EU will drop in value next year.
| 2007 | 2008** | 2009** | |
| ICT + Digital CE value* | 722.6 | 743.8 | 760.1 |
| Digital CE value* | 61.2 | 62.7 | 60.7 |
| *Billions of Euro **Estimated | |||
EITO has been a trusted source (although no one ever agrees on any unit sales figures) so we guess it must depend upon the definition of “Digital CE.” A recent GfK study with CES showed worldwide CE with an impressive 10% growth in value in 2008. Yes, prices are dropping in many categories but portable navigation devices (GPS) expect worldwide revenue growth of nearly 20% in 2008, laptop computers (up 15%) and mobile phones/smartphones (up 14%) .…oh, maybe the iPhone goes under Mobile, the laptops under IT and GPS under…well, Telecom!
See the problem? It’s getting harder and harder to define CE vs. IT vs. Telecom.
So maybe we should complain instead about the annoying habit of lumping all ICT together as if we haven’t clearly bifurcated into B2B versus B2C models. Particularly when you try to add in Digital Consumer Electronics, why not just separate the consumer from the business? That’s hard enough… but makes more sense when trying to see what’s rising and what’s falling.
