Latin

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SARA FISHER

Staff Reporter

The LatinChannels Spring ’99 conference boasted a straightforward premise: Bring buyers and sellers together in the same room and let the deal-making begin.

Starting on March 14 in Newport Beach, more than 100 Latin American-based distributors and resellers of computer goods began three days of meetings with 45 major U.S. companies selling computer software, hardware and information technology services.

In addition to bringing potential business partners together, the conference also includes a series of seminars that address regional economic forecasts and major trends in the Latin American technology industry.

This is the third LatinChannels event, and the first one held on the West Coast. The previous two were held in Miami, a city with strong ties to Latin American commerce.

“A huge percentage of the high-tech industry is here in Southern California,” said Ken Richard, event head and president of Oakland-based LatinChannels Inc. “It’s logical to tap into that opportunity and bring the (sell-through) channels directly to them. It’s a mountain-to-Mohammed scenario.”

Local attendees include Cupertino-based Symantec Corp., whose Latin American operations are headquartered in Santa Monica and which is promoting its partnerships with IBM and Intel Corp.; Thousand Oaks-based Xircom Inc., which is also representing Lucent Technologies Inc.; and Compton-based Belkin Components.

“Latin America is definitely a focus growth market for our company,” said Melody Dawson, Symantic’s senior regional marketing manager for Latin America. “We’re laying the groundwork now to position ourselves as the market leaders, particularly in Argentina, Mexico and Brazil. We know the economies are going through some problems, but both the short- and long-term opportunities are attractive.”

Even with Latin America’s vacillating economies, the region is expected to spend up to $1 billion in software by the end of 2000, according to International Data Corp. It reached $541.3 million in 1998, a 37.8 percent rise over the previous year.

IDC also projects that Latin America’s overall computer services market, which includes hardware and software support and installation, will reach $13.9 billion in 2002.

Richard expects about $6 million worth of deals to be closed at Newport Beach, almost double what the last event yielded. However, he emphasized that the conference often spawns discussions that lead to agreements at a later date.

That was the case last year for Xircom, a manufacturer of networking cards and related computer products, which saw a 125 percent increase in its Latin American business, according to Jonna Stopnik, the company’s director of sales for the Americas.

“We started relationships at (last year’s) conference that later became business, and have actually renewed agreements there,” she said. “Even the cocktail receptions are important at LatinChannels. It may be socializing, but it has the potential of being so much more.”

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