The general mood felt like the German market is currently a little flat, due to a number of factors including the uncertainty surrounding the national elections and funding for education in the near future. Due to the German market working on a cyclical basis whereby budgets are awarded to local authorities and cities in March, with the money being spent over the remainder of the year, the months of January and February are traditionally quite quiet. But Didacta proved to us, that despite a fair amount of uncertainty, the education sector is very bright!
Positive Signs For 2025
That said, there are positive signs for 2025 and beyond. The government announced the emergence of Digitalpakt 2. This is a second round of funding aimed at updating and upgrading digital teaching in German schools. There will therefore be a lot of demand for devices and requirements for safe storage and charging solutions. The first round of funding was worth €6.5bn and ran from May 2019 to May 2024 (source Digitalpakt Schule 1.0: Was lief gut, was schlecht und was kommt? | netmoms.de). The second round will be worth €5bn over the next 6 years (source Digitalpakt Schule 2.0 – Bund und Länder beschließen Eckpunkte). It is dependent on the new coalition government agreeing to continue but it is unlikely they will do otherwise as backing out of the commitment would not sit well with the German public.
We were enormously surprised by the influx of visitors who also came onto the Zioxi stand with specific problems and ideas, many of which we were able to solve by using one of our innovative charging or storage solutions. One product which received a lot of interest was the iPad Network USB-C Basket Charging Trolley. Many of the people we spoke to, saw the basket trolley as a practical solution for schools sharing devices over multiple floors. they liked how compact they were too – some competitor solutions were described as being ‘a bit bulky, and cumbersome to carry between classrooms’.
VR Headset Charging Solutions Gained Recognition
As expected, VR Trolleys were hot, as was the theme of VR in general. We had people from VR manufacturers like HTC and dealers selling VR products interested in the trolleys and what they can do. The ability to charge up to 40 x VR Headsets in one charging trolley, was particularly impressive to a number of visitors who were looking for a solution to safely charge and store larger numbers of devices. The Volt lockers gained lots of interest too. A number of schools were interested in offering charging solutions to those students who have forgotten to charge their devices at home or whose battery wouldn’t last the day.
All in all, our stand was very well attended, which confirmed to us that it makes sense for Zioxi to continuing exhibiting at shows such as Didacta. The next show in Germany will be LEARNTEC in Karlsruhe in May 2025 – we look forward to seeing you there!