Automobile Industry in Europe and Leading Companies IT Sales Opportunities – 2008

Rapidly expanding markets in Central and Eastern Europe, growth in demand by domestic and foreign OEMs in emerging markets such as Russia, significant foreign direct investments, high exports are driving automakers to expand capacities. In addition, stiff competition in the area of innovative hybrid cars from automakers in Asia-Pacific markets such as China and India and a growing number of automobile manufacturers operating with Just-in-Time (JIT) schemes are further driving automakers and component suppliers in the region to expand capacities and production facilities to incorporate new equipment and tap on opportunities in these emerging markets. For example, in 2007, BMW announced a series of capacity expansion plans that include an investment of $20.6 million in its diesel development centre in Austria and investment of $147 million in its car production facility in Germany. Italy-based automaker, Fiat also announced similar plans that include the expansion of its Fiat 500 production in its Poland facility and the expansion of its Fiat Power train production in Italy.

The report forecasts the IT spending of the Automobile Industry in Europe over the period 2007-2010. It is meant for IT vendors and intends to help them identify selling opportunities in the Automobile Industry in Europe. The report identifies key business issues being faced by the Automobile Industry in Europe.

Further, the identified sales drivers can be used to penetrate these accounts or increase current share of the customer's wallet. Also, the report lists leading IT buyers and provides their brief company profile, along with their IT spending.

Industry trends and drivers have a direct or indirect affect on IT spending of all companies operating within an industry. For example – increased threat perception and incidence of fraud would result in increase in demand for security software and hardware. Thus, we can conclude that industry spending on any particular IT product or service is an important indicator of the criticality of that product or service for the industry. Based on the IT spend information available in ‘TechNavio^TM’, we have computed a ‘criticality score’ for various IT products and services, for Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG and BMW AG.

Through an in-depth analysis of industry trends and drivers and company level developments and events, we have made the ‘IT Selling Opportunities Map’ for hardware, software and IT services for Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG and BMW AG. These maps have been divided into four zones representing Level I, Level II and Level III opportunity areas. Level I opportunity areas have the highest scores and hence, there is a high probability that Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG and BMW AG will buy these products and services. Level II opportunity areas have lower scores and hence, lower probability to sell to Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG and BMW AG.Level III opportunities have the lowest scores and hence, unlikely to sell to Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG and BMW AG.

The report is meant for IT vendors and intends to help them identify selling opportunities within the company. Further, the identified sales drivers can be used to penetrate these accounts or increase current share of the customer's wallet. Also, the report lists key IT spending decision makers, which will enable salesperson to directly contact the key executives within the company.