Despite a bustling market for capital goods as a whole, the computer and telecommunications industries are experiencing hard times to the professional association, ZVEI, which represents the two sectors within the federat-ion of electronic and electromechanics industry, Agence France Presse reports from Frankfurt. Business in the computer and telecommun-ications sectors is stagnant, if not decline: in the first six months of this year, orders declined between 3% and 3.8% in comparison with the same period last year. Combined output for the two sectors declined by 3% to $7,000m and turnover was down 2.2% to $8,560m. West German information tecchnology manufacturers have lost share in rather spectacular fashion on their own market, with sales dropping there from $5,000 to $4,000m, a fall of nearly 20%. The industry admits that it has made errors: We made a mistake by concentrating solely on teletex super-telex instead of developing facsimile machines, commented Klaus Krone, president of the association and managing director of Krone telephone manufacturing in West Berlin. Today the market is going to facsimile. As we aren’t able to produce it ourselves, we are letting the Japanese totally dominate the market, he continued. In his opinion, the market for fax machines in West Germany has potential to generate annual sales of $100m to $150m. The computer industry is equally handicapped by its lack of qualified personnel, especially in the programming area: Already companies are going to India as a matter of urgency to develop sofwtare, indicates Krone. Because here in West Germany, we haven’t got the necessary specialists. The collapse of Nixdorf, the second largest manufacturer in West Germany after Siemens, is an example of the difficulties facing the information technology sector in West Germany, say observers.
