This growth of course also means increased competition. The number of vendors selling in the German market alone was growing from 10 in 2004 to 40 in 2005. This is classical for a market that enters the mainstream. Since prices will drop sharply this means with the additional competition that it can be expected that only a few vendors will succeed at the end. Also some vendors will certainly try to move to new applications or more professional ones to avoid the dropping prices and margins in the mainstream. This could mean that e.g. location based services might get a push and certainly content related services will see more innovations.

The debate has been on for quite some time in Europe whether companies that announce record profits are morally allowed to fire people using the argument that this is required to also stay competitive in the future. Further, we have seen many annoucements from a range of tech companies who intend to reduce their workforces.

This seems firstly a more European than American discussion (unions are in the US as successful as Amtrak) and then people are less loyal to companies anyway so are used to having to change and move around.

The debate in Europe has two sides: One (the management's) brings together many - viable - arguments why, in order to stay competitive and save other jobs in the near future, it is necessary to slim down the company. The other group (the churches have found fertile ground here too) is saying that there is an ethical, moralistic part to being a manager too which includes feeling responsible for conserving jobs as well and not foremost to look at delivering results to please investors (owners).

I personally think the debate lacks one crucial element. Ownership. Not only stock ownership but employee stock option participation is something that is not found a lot in European companies. If at all then only at top management levels. There are many smaller companies I know of that have profit participation as an element to incentivize and most importantly to make employees feel like owners. That of course causes total panic among the unions because if suddenly everyone feels as "owner" there is nobody left that they can represent. To me this has to be the model for the future, though. There seems nothing more motivating than being partly in the boat and do the things that belong to you. What role unions will play then has to be seen of course, most likely they have to look for a new job then too where they can become owners as well.

Now I just came across a book that could have been only written by an American, making fun - partly - of, well, firing, and is also trying to look at the bright side of it. Here the chapters of the book:

• The job so terrible you can only hope to be fired
• The firing you didn't see coming
• The time you deserved to be fired
• The time getting fired leads you to something better
• The time you had to fire yourself

The German newspaper Die Welt announced some numbers from Bitkom and Eito quantifying the growth of video downloads in Germany and in Europe:

• 160,000 monthly downloads of movies, series, or documentations in Germany
• This is a 45% growth from a year ago
• 14 million homes in Germany will have broadband Internet access by end of 2006 which is the main driver for this growth
• In 2006 Western Europe will see some 88 million EUR worth of video downloads
• In 2007 a 50 % market growth is to be expected