CeBIT

CeBIT was a computer expo which, at its peak, was the largest and most internationally representative. The trade fair was held each year on the Hanover fairground, the world's largest fairground, in Hanover, Germany. In its day, it was considered a barometer of current trends and a measure of the state of the art in information technology. It was organized by Deutsche Messe AG.

With an exhibition area of roughly 450,000 m2 (4.8 million ft2) and a peak attendance of 850,000 visitors during the dot-com boom, it was larger both in area and attendance than its Asian counterpart COMPUTEX and its no-longer held American equivalent COMDEX. CeBIT is a German language acronym for Centrum für Büroautomation, Informationstechnologie und Telekommunikation, which translates as "Center for Office Automation, Information Technology and Telecommunication".

The final CeBIT took place in 2018.

History

CeBIT was traditionally the computing part of the Hanover Fair, a big industry trade show held every year. It was established in 1970, with the opening of the Hanover fairground's new Hall 1, then the largest exhibition hall in the world. However, in the 1980s the information technology and telecommunications part was straining the resources of the trade fair so much that it was given a separate trade show starting in 1986, which was held four weeks earlier than the main Hanover Fair.

The number of visitors for the new exhibition increased to 830,000 in 2001, but by 2007 the CeBIT expo attendance had shrunk to around 200,000, then attendance rebounded to 334,000 by 2010. The 2008 expo was marred by police raids of 51 exhibitors for patent infringement.