Color-screen handsets were sported by most leading mobile phone makers, but they are only expecting incremental improvements to sales and are not expected to bring back the 60 percent growth enjoyed in the late 1990s and 2000.
The tone for the CeBit trade fair was set on Tuesday when Nokia, the world's leading maker of mobile phones, rained on its own parade, overshadowing a long-awaited handset launch with news of a sharp fall in sales from its mobile networks division.
Shares in telecom equipment companies duly fell, the slide extended by an earnings warning on the other side of the Atlantic from Lucent Technologies. Lucent's main problems stem from the boom years when innovations and an exuberant financial climate led to huge over-investments and overcapacity.
True, innovations at CeBit this year were few and far between, Hewlett-Packard's German boss Heribert Schmitz told German television on Thursday.
But after the economic effects of Sept. 11, and the bursting of the tech bubble, companies are not interested in new gimmicks. Instead, CeBit attendees focused on ways of getting more out of their networks and means of making them more secure.
Sober mood
Everyone knew that the party ended long ago for technology and communications companies after an unsustainable boom, but the mood remains downbeat and the future uncertain.
"Expectations were far higher two years ago, the industry is going through a period of retrenchment," said Simon Scholes, an analyst at Bankgesellschaft Berlin who was attending the CeBit fair.
"CeBit 2000 coincided with the top of the dot-com boom. Given that the (technology-heavy) Neuer Markt is now worth less than 20 percent of what it was two years ago, it is hardly surprising that the atmosphere is less frenetic and more sober," Scholes added.
The evidence is only anecdotal, but CeBit veterans say visitor numbers appear lower than in previous years at an event that attracts hundreds of thousands of people, from executives such as Microsoft's Steve Ballmer to the general public.
"Normally, it's like sardines. This year you can move around without any problem," said one Dutch-based analyst.
Organizers of CeBit, which runs until next Wednesday, will not be drawn on visitor numbers so far but point out that they have added an extra day to the program this year.
Uncertainty at home
Nowhere is the future more uncertain than in the German telecommunications industry, Europe's largest market.
The German subsidiaries of cell phone rivals Vodafone Group and MMO2 both said here that they do not expect a mass market for new high-speed Internet services, so-called third generation (3G) technologies, to emerge before 2004.
The hope is that 3G, allowing functions such as video streaming, will fuel a new era of growth.
Things could look very different by 2004, with most players conceding that six rivals are too many in a German market dominated by Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile unit and Vodafone.
Ad Scheepbouwer, head of Dutch company KPN, owner of German No. 3 E-Plus, finally conceded that the day might come when it may seek partners or possibly even sell the company.
KPN said Thursday that it would take a massive goodwill write-down on its investment in E-Plus, a telling sign of how valuations have declined in the sector since 1999.
Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that many companies are putting a fresh accent on partnership, with Telekom and Vodafone teaming to develop online payment via mobile handsets in Britain and Germany.
Telekom also announced a mobile software alliance with Microsoft, which is seeking to extend its dominance in the PC market into the wireless world.
Microsoft CEO Ballmer, speaking at the keynote address, set out his vision for a more emollient approach after years of legal battles over its Windows software.
"We need to be a responsible leader for our industry. We have to be engaged with our industry. We have to be a respectful, open and appropriate competitor," Ballmer said.
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