Bosch looks to connectivity for further growth

Germany's leading industrial group Bosch is looking to connectivity for further growth, the company said at its annual press conference here on Wednesday.

The sales of Bosch in the past business year reached 49 billion euros (54 billion U.S. dollars), an increase of 7.4 percent adjusted for exchange-rate effects. Earnings before interest and taxes rose to 3 billion euros in 2014, a 10 percent increase year on year.

"We are driving connectivity forward in all our business sectors and playing an active role in shaping it," said Volkmar Denner, chairman of the Bosch board of management.

Connectivity is one of the five aspects of the new mission initiated by the company. Examples given by Bosch illustrated how the company has been exploring opportunities of growth by putting connectivity into practice in various sectors.

As a result of its development work in the electromobility area, Bosch networks 80 percent of the web-enabled charge spots in Germany. With its subsidiary Bosch Software Innovations, the company launched the second generation of Internet of Things (IoTs) suite, a software platform for IoTs. Bosch disclosed that it currently has 15,000 software engineers and 3,000 developers for the IoTs.

The company stresses that it has good credentials to harness connectivity to generate new service-based business models. Bosch is the only company that is active on all three levels of connectivity, namely sensor technology, software and services, Denner said in a statement.

There are 100 ongoing projects in Bosch's plants that are related to connected production. Industry 4.0, interpreted as connected industry in Bosch, has gained greater significance in the company, which has been pooling its Industry 4.0 expertise in the Connected Industry innovation cluster. More than 100 employees are currently involved in the cluster. Endit