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(Last updated: 12 Jul 2007)
Trends and opportunities
The market
E-government
Like many Western European governments, the German Government’s use of online technologies has advanced rapidly during the last few years.
BundOnline 2005 project was initiated by the German Government which aimed to implement 376 government services (from 100+ federal authorities) online.
The largest buyer of ICT in Australia is the government and thus there exists Australian expertise in this sector.
E-commerce
Germany traditionally was one of the largest mail-order markets in the world. With a growing number of Internet accesses in the population, online shopping is gaining popularity. Germany has one of the world’s most sophisticated e-commerce markets and ranks among the top European countries in terms of online sales, along with the Scandinavian countries and the UK.
B2B and B2C platforms are well established. Currently 45.6 per cent of the German population (37.7 million) have Internet access. Leading Internet Service Providers are T-Online, AOL, and Tiscali.
Online banking
Germans are the heaviest European users of banking and financial websites, and Germany is much further ahead in the use of online banking than the USA. Deutsche Bank recently reported that research firms predict this number will grow to between 22 million and 30 million in 2006. Opportunities exist in both sectors, B2B and B2C. Total e-commerce turnover forecast for 2006 is €676.1 billion.
Telecommunications
Deregulation in the telecommunications sector is creating new opportunities in several sectors from ISDN/DSL based software/hardware to mobile commerce applications. UMTS and GPRS will also offer opportunities for Australian exporters.
Outsourcing
Major international and national banks in Germany are beginning to outsource their IT departments in order to reduce costs. Other industries increasingly follow this trend to focus on their core businesses. There are good opportunities for Australian service providers to offer their services in this segment.
Growth in the software market was negatively impacted by the difficult situation of the German financial sector, which used to be a heavy adopter of IT. German companies have a strong Enterprise Resource Planning and applications tradition. In this area, demand is shifting towards faster and easier solutions with emphasis on functionality and with an increasing focus on relationship management with suppliers, order management, and procurement.
Opportunities
Major opportunities exist for Australian companies in the following areas in the German ICT industry:
- e-commerce, e-government, e-banking
- telecommunications applications
- hardware - niche products
- software
- IT security
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