Europe is a continent of many nations, natural languages and currencies. Uniting it is an on-going project begun after the second world war to create stability and prevent it (specifically Germany and France) from being the origin of future global conflict. The EC and latterly the EU corralled countries together in a common trading block. The fall of communism led to an extension eastwards with large countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria joining, giving millions of people the chance to share in the economic benefits.
Although increasingly fragmented, Europe is a relatively rich region with a long and significant investment in IT and communications. Sending on ITC offerings in 2021 grew by 9% to $2.0 trillion (measured in current $US values). The 3 major countries (Germany, the UK and France) accounted for 54% of spending – a much higher proportion than the ration of their population which accounted for just 29% of the regional total.
I’ve given the ITC market sizing of each country (in local currency), its growth in the year and the proportion this spending is of the European total in my Figure above. It shows that there are big differences in spending between south and north as much as well as between east and west – comparative economic success in east and south could move reduce the gap, but looks unlikely any time soon.
National, political and social fragmentation prevent major European suppliers from succeeding on the world stage where increasingly (and almost exclusively) US suppliers hold the patents and Chinese ones do the manufacturing. In future, AI and automation could reduce China’s advantages, allowing more manufacturing and IT services to be done in Europe. In addition Europe could benefit from its greater focus on Greener and more sustainable computing. But we lack government sponsorship and vendor leadership, so I’m not holding my breath.
For reference I’ve included a map of Europe with country names in my Figure below.
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