The message from Siemens AG at CeBIT was that its Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG computer unit was benefiting from a rebound in Europe and saw worldwide sales rise 13% to $3.4bn in the first five months of current fiscal year. New orders in the period rose 14% to $3.54bn Gerhard Schulmeyer, Siemens Nixdorf chief executive, said. In Germany, sales rose 11% to $2.06bn and orders also rose 11% to $2.06bn. Internationally, sales climbed 21% to $1.3bn and orders 24% to $1.47bn. The figures are all after allowing for the loss of revenue from the sale of Siemens’s $530m-a-year high-end printer business last year. Much of the growth stemmed from the rest of Europe, where Italian sales in the five-month period rose 36%, Austrian sales rose 25% and French sales rose 19%. Siemens Nixdorf is now concentrating on growing sales in Asia and the US, Schulmeyer said. Europe is under-investing in technology, compared to the rest of the world, he said, adding that Siemens Nixdorf expected the European market to grow 7.5% this year – half the level of growth in Asia and the US. Moreover the US has 30.3m people connected to the Internet, three times as many as Europe, he said. The German market is the biggest dog, so Nixdorf is trying to shift its focus away from it, Schulmeyer said: Germany spends $1,000 per employee on computers, half the US level. We are doing a good job in Asia but are still heavily weighted toward Germany, he said. We have to learn to live with and like complexity, he added.
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