Ireland still seen as likeliest Euro tech capital
By Stephanie Gordon
EE Times
(04/25/03 08:35 a.m. EST)
LONDON, UK -- Despite the recent troubles Ireland has had keeping multinational companies in the country, it has still been named as the mostly likely location to be the technology capital of Europe, according to a survey of technology executives from across Europe undertaken by the Eurocom PR Network.
The survey of 147 senior executives revealed that 19 percent of respondents believed Ireland had the most potential become the Silicon Valley of Europe, followed by Germany with 14 percent and the UK with 8 percent. India was also flagged up as the most likely non- European country to be host of a technology capital, also with 8 percent.
On technologies with the most growth potential, one in five of respondents believed IT security followed by Customer Relationship Management (17 percent) and wireless telecommunications (17 percent) had the most potential in Europe.
Other technologies featuring included IT outsourcing (11 percent), web services and e-commerce (both 6 percent) and storage (5 percent). In the 2001 survey, GPRS applications and mobile commerce were believed to have the most growth potential but this year they only just made it into the Top 10 with four and three percent respectively.
More than half of the European technology executives believed that there would be a recovery in technology spend by the fourth quarter of 2003 or the first quarter 2004, although a pessimistic 3 percent said that they did not expect to see some recovery until at least 2005. While one third predicted an increase in the number of tech jobs, 16 percent of respondents anticipate further job cuts and half expect the number of jobs to remain the same.
"Overall the findings of the study are optimistic with one in three respondents expecting to increase jobs over the next six months and over half (54%) expecting to increase revenues," said Tom Burgess, founder of Eurocom PR Network.
Grüße Max
