Cebit 09 Cebit organisers underlined the crisis facing the IT industry this morning when they claimed last week's IT extravaganza had gotten off to a "powerful start and ended on a successful note, boosting optimism in the world ICT industry".

This despite the fact that the number of visitors was down 20 per cent to 400,000 and the number of exhibitors was 4,300, well down on last year's 5,845, itself down on the previous year's 6,153.

In fairness, the final numbers might seem better than expected to anyone who was tramping round the show grounds last week, and who noticed that it had seemed more crowded on Monday when people were still putting the stands together.

Exhibitors definitely knew something was up, with very few really breakthrough announcements happening at the show. Most of the staff working the stands would happily volunteer that traffic was well down on previous years, despite the organisers using temporary partitions to halve the size of many of the halls.