History (1990): CeBIT’90 (Hannover, West Germany): Largest Computer Fair in World

Unlike Japanese, Americans usually prefer Comdex/Fall to announce their new products.

This year, they’ve made extra efforts at CeBIT’90, acknowledging the fact that tomorrow’s unified Europe is going to have more and more consequences in their financial balance.

On more than 361,000 square feet of exhibition space, 36,000 more than in 1989, CeBIT’90 is the leading computer fair in the world.

4,012 exhibitors from 41 countries (compared with 3,214 in 1989), filled the 18 exhibition halls, up from 15 last year. Approximately 1,370 foreign firms, 39 percent of the total exhibitors, up from 1,118 last year, were represented. The U.S. was the second strongest showing country with 312 booths (196 last year), behind West Germany, with 2,470 booths, and before Taiwan with 210 and the U.K. with 158. An estimated 6,000 U. professionals attended this show among a total of over 600,000 visitors.

Between the East and the West, CeBIT is by far the leading computer show in the world, two times bigger than other large competing ones like Orgatechnik in Cologne (375,725 visitors and 1,751 exhibitors) and Comdex/Fall in Las Vegas, NV, (119,000 visitors and 1,740 booths).

And CeBIT should continue on growing the next years, taking advantage of a unified Europe and of a propitious location. Hannover is situated in the middle of the new unified Europe, between Western and Eastern countries that are widely opening out to Western culture, and therefore to computers.

Four events can be brought out in the data storage segment:
– the advent of first 3.5-inch OAT units
– the first dual function optical drives
– the introduction of several notebook computers with built-in 2.5-inch hard disks
– the decision of several American Winchester manufacturers to establish plants in Europe as early as this year.

Note: CeBIT was ended in 2018 after 33 years of annual IT exhibition.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠27, published on April 1990.