Mail business in the year of market liberalisation

The demand for mail in Germany depends primarily on the economic climate and the extent to which electronic media such as fax, e-mail, text messaging and the internet take the place of the conventional letter. We expect the domestic market for mail communication to continue shrinking in the coming years. Full liberalisation of the market will also serve to reduce our share but we have prepared ourselves for the forthcoming changes.

Further moderate growth and a sustained trend towards targeted advertising are anticipated in the German advertising market. Although the market for paper-based advertising was opened up at the beginning of 2008, we intend to consolidate our position in this segment and to build on it in the advertising market as a whole. The press services market is likely to contract somewhat because of the increasing use of new media. We are seeking to maintain our revenue position here also by drawing on the growing significance of subscriptions.

In the cross-border mail business, substitution by electronic media is being mitigated by a rise in direct marketing. We therefore expect the market as a whole to remain stable. We intend to hone our leading international position as a provider of corporate information solutions – a market we expect to grow steadily because more and more major companies are outsourcing the activities which are not part of their core businesses. In the light of this, we will continue to develop customised solutions.

The parcel market is growing at the same rate as e-commerce and we are eager to benefit from this trend. We will also be leveraging synergies arising from integration of the parcel business in Germany by standardising IT platforms, optimising transport as well as combining further mail and parcel delivery districts outside cities. We are already delivering mail and parcels together in more than 30,000 districts. Despite growing competition, we intend to defend our share of the private customer market. Strong growth in demand is anticipated for the services we provide to business customers, principally as a result of the expanding e-commerce segment. We aim to profit from this development with a modified product portfolio.