This was already reported upstream by SAP in GCC Bugzilla – Bug 52973:

"In following code, gcc-4.7 does not accept the visibility attribute
defined in the class declaration:

template <class T> class __attribute__((visibility("default"))) a
{
public:
  /* A */ static int c;
};

class __attribute__((visibility("default"))) b : a <b> {};

template<> /* B */ int a<b>::c = 0;


With g++-4.7, a<b>::c is hidden, with g++-4.6 (and before) it is not.

$ g++-4.7 -fvisibility=hidden -c def.cpp && objdump -Ct def.o | grep "a<b>"
0000000000000000 g     O .bss    0000000000000004 .hidden a<b>::c

$ g++-4.6 -fvisibility=hidden -c def.cpp && objdump -Ct def.o | grep "a<b>"
0000000000000000 g     O .bss    0000000000000004 a<b>::c

Setting the default visibility at /* A */ or /* B */ works with
g++-4.7, but I think that it still should work also with the code above."

According to the upstream bugzilla, this is fixed in gcc 4.7.1. It would be useful for SAP if the fix could also be integrated in the gcc shipped with the Developer Toolset.