Sights and Sounds of CeBit

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Given the dominance of the mobile handset market by Nokia (NOK) and Motorola (MOT), it might seem a suicide mission for a small company to try to compete. But Taiwan's E-Ten Information Systems seems to have found a niche selling high-end personal digital assistants with mobile-phone capability.

Small but Impressive

With annual sales of about $150 million, mostly in Europe, Taipei-based E-Ten is puny compared to the giants. However, the company is profitable and growing, says President Wayne Ma. Its elegant handsets, selling for $650 to $800, are aimed at business users, as well as the kind of people who want a status item or just have to have the latest technology.

E-Ten, which has just started selling its devices in the U.S., prides itself on being on the cutting edge of technology. For example, its devices, sold under the Glofiish brand, had built-in global positioning last year. Nokia is just now launching its first mass-market phone with built-in GPS.

To compete with the giants' much larger R&D budgets, E-Ten focuses on PDAs, introducing a half-dozen new models a year. It only designs for Microsoft's mobile operating system, vs. the Symbian O/S used by Nokia and others. "We need to be very focused," says Ma.

Russia Surprises

The official partner nation at CeBit this year was Russia, which was fitting, considering the degree to which Western European companies are drawing on Russian software talent. Sun Microsystems (SUNW), with operations in St. Petersburg, is one example of a company using Russian developers.

The Russians took over a large space in one exhibition hall to showcase their own high-tech products. One product line was surprising, considering that Russia is not known for its democratic traditions and President Vladimir Putin is busy cracking down on press freedom: voting machines. A flyer from manufacturer SRI Voskhod promises "high integrity of results."

Maybe they can sell some to the state of Florida.

Ewing is BusinessWeek's European regional editor .