Conquering US markets is probably the dream of every IT product company outside the USA. So many German companies have tried their luck and gave up due to a variety of reasons. Talking to entrepreneurs here the best and mostly the only successful examplethey cite is SAP, which embraced globalization early and just had a fabulous product during the biggest expansion period.

This said I was a bit perplex seeing one of Europe's biggest virtual web hosting and ecommerce hosting provider announcing the conquest of the US market recently! 1&1 plans to enter this hyper competitive market with a mere EUR 3 mio. in the beginning. The forecast is to break even in 2006 in US and reach a position in the TOP 5 of ecommerce web hosting providers. 1&1 offers an interesting pre-launch package free for 3 years. Indeed this is a bold marketing step, but I have my doubts if this is enough. 1&1 has had a hard time during the deepest consolidation recently and doubtlessly learned the lesson to stay cost efficient and (feature) competitive at the same time. It probably features some very efficient internal processes to setup and maintain the web hosting services. Also the web hosting market is surprisingly fragmented in US, but just a mere 2 mio. in ads will not change the picture entirely.
So America be prepared for a new competitor! :-)