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Or that Europe missed out on the technology revolution in a huge way. The biggest company in the world is Apple, a mobile phone producer. But I don't think anyo

Or that Europe missed out on the technology revolution in a huge way. The biggest company in the world is Apple, a mobile phone producer. But I don't think anyone would say that the mobile phone industry lacks competition. I can name 10 brands off the top of my head.

mustafa_pasi 5y ago
I agree, but it is more the costumer facing tech that the EU does not do well. All of FAANG started out as B2C tech products/services. In these markets the EU is at a natural disadvantage compared to the US, China and maybe even Russia. It is much easier to grow if you have just one huge country that you can grow within before expanding internationally. But then one should also ask, why hasn't such a B2C tech company emerged in Germany or France or Italy, all of which have sizable populations. I guess the tech people in these countries where getting hired by traditional industries to work on boring industrial applications. And the finance people were in no mood to finance a web search engine or a social network in those days. We had lots of Amazons and lots of Facebooks but they never attempted to expand beyond the national borders of their respective countries. I guess some of them were relatively profitable, so maybe they thought they had a nice deal going on, until the American giants came knocking on the door.
IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Does it help to be another non-Chinese Oppo or Xiaomi? There's not a ton of profit to be made competing with Apple and Samsung in the West. There's opportunities elsewhere, but it's hard competing with low-cost Chinese smartphone companies in low/middle income markets, particularly in their Chinese homemarket. Instead there's tons of opportunities investing in the mobile space. From the iPhone 12 chip built with a Dutch ASML machine, to companies like MessageBird or Adyen to name a few more Dutch companies. I agree there's plenty of competition in the US, but there's no other single market that even came close to the US until China came along, but even that is just a large number of people making an average of 10k a year. The EU is a big market but so is 'Asia', at the end of the day, even with a lot of regulatory integration, they're still separate markets that each require their own approach, very much unlike the US. It's no surprise that lots of product launch rollouts in the EU of US companies are slow and skip lots of EU countries, compared to launches in the US/Asia. It's not because the EU has 'missed out on the tech revolution', it's because the EU isn't really a single market and it's really tricky to launch in 27 different countries. That's true for EU companies just the same as it is for non-EU companies. It's why there's hardly a European Amazon, but there's tons of local EU companies that I like just as much (e.g. Bol.com in the Netherlands). They just can't easily go beyond their borders, and eventually get bought by a US/Asia player with a massive domestic market which now has a warchest to dominate the small EU players, too.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  And Amazon dodged US state regulations by not operating in many states (but still shipping to them). Good luck not complying with German law while servicing German customers because you only operate in the Netherlands

mustafa_pasi 5y ago

I agree, but it is more the costumer facing tech that the EU does not do well. All of FAANG started out as B2C tech products/services. In these markets the EU is at a natural disadvantage compared to the US, China and maybe even Russia. It is much easier to grow if you have just one huge country that you can grow within before expanding internationally. But then one should also ask, why hasn't such a B2C tech company emerged in Germany or France or Italy, all of which have sizable populations. I guess the tech people in these countries where getting hired by traditional industries to work on boring industrial applications. And the finance people were in no mood to finance a web search engine or a social network in those days. We had lots of Amazons and lots of Facebooks but they never attempted to expand beyond the national borders of their respective countries. I guess some of them were relatively profitable, so maybe they thought they had a nice deal going on, until the American giants came knocking on the door.

IkmoIkmo 5y ago

Does it help to be another non-Chinese Oppo or Xiaomi? There's not a ton of profit to be made competing with Apple and Samsung in the West. There's opportunities elsewhere, but it's hard competing with low-cost Chinese smartphone companies in low/middle income markets, particularly in their Chinese homemarket. Instead there's tons of opportunities investing in the mobile space. From the iPhone 12 chip built with a Dutch ASML machine, to companies like MessageBird or Adyen to name a few more Dutch companies. I agree there's plenty of competition in the US, but there's no other single market that even came close to the US until China came along, but even that is just a large number of people making an average of 10k a year. The EU is a big market but so is 'Asia', at the end of the day, even with a lot of regulatory integration, they're still separate markets that each require their own approach, very much unlike the US. It's no surprise that lots of product launch rollouts in the EU of US companies are slow and skip lots of EU countries, compared to launches in the US/Asia. It's not because the EU has 'missed out on the tech revolution', it's because the EU isn't really a single market and it's really tricky to launch in 27 different countries. That's true for EU companies just the same as it is for non-EU companies. It's why there's hardly a European Amazon, but there's tons of local EU companies that I like just as much (e.g. Bol.com in the Netherlands). They just can't easily go beyond their borders, and eventually get bought by a US/Asia player with a massive domestic market which now has a warchest to dominate the small EU players, too.

aidenn0 5y ago
And Amazon dodged US state regulations by not operating in many states (but still shipping to them). Good luck not complying with German law while servicing German customers because you only operate in the Netherlands