Siemens 2008 Annual Report Download - page 212

116 Management’s discussion and analysis
Siemens has a major opportunity to grow in the areas of environmental and climate protection, ranging from
how society generates and transmits power to how it is used in such energy-intensive elds as manufacturing,
transportation, and the operation of buildings. Within the power generation industry, we are already engaged
in markets for both new installations of renewable power generation and modernization of existing fossil power
generation systems. We also provide solutions for increasing energy efciency and reducing emissions in the
other broad markets just mentioned. We anticipate that public policy initiatives in many countries will lead to
greater demand for such solutions in the years ahead.
Another broad growth opportunity is to begin developing the capabilities required to design, manufacture and
sell so-called SMART products (simple, maintenance-friendly, affordable, reliable, and timely to market). Adding
such products to our current portfolio would enable us to increase our revenues by serving large and fast-grow-
ing regional markets, such as in Asia, where low prices vie for quality and innovation in determining customer
purchases. One of the additional opportunities in this regard is localizing certain activities, such as procure-
ment, manufacturing, maintenance and service, which could enable us to reduce costs while enhancing our
presence in strategic markets.
The realignment of our sales and marketing activities on a global basis in our new cluster structure also repre-
sents a major opportunity to improve our protability. By sharing resources and eliminating overlapping sales
and back-ofce functions, we see the opportunity to reduce our enterprise-wide cost position on a long-term
basis.
Our business, nancial condition or results of operation could suffer material adverse effects as a result of
certain risks. For an overview of the Company’s risk factors, see “Risk management.”