We’ve already learned that the French are keen on going “green”. But less well known is their passion for new technology. This market has already achieved a degree of maturity and could open up a number of opportunities for foreign companies. In fact, the ICT sector generated turnover of €110.6 billion in 2009, or 15.5% of the entire European market, making France the third-largest market on the continent after Italy and Spain. The EITO[1] also estimates that the development of the telecommunications market in France is much stronger than the European average, primarily because of the boom in mobile data services, up 20% in 2009…
Today almost one in five French people surf the web on their mobile phone, 65% more than one year ago. This rapid growth in mobile internet is largely due to the widespread distribution of new devices like the iPhone, Blackberry and other mobiles with Android pre-installed. Apple has sold 3 million smartphones in France in just two-and-a-half years, making the French market Apple’s second largest after the United States. According to the comScore Institute, which analyzes smartphone adoption in Europe, France recorded the second biggest increase in user numbers in 2009. And the French don’t stop there when it comes to finding new uses for their mobiles. On May 21, 2010 the city of Nice became Europe’s first wireless mobile payment city. By enabling consumers to make payments, receive information, provide ID and many other things besides, NFC technology (Near Field Communication) in mobile phones is revolutionizing their daily lives, and is also providing new markets for the microelectronics and telecom industries.
Chinese telecommunications device maker Huawei, which last year created an R&D center near Paris, has carefully gauged France’s potential for mobiles. It recently chose to market its first branded device in France (a smartphone, of course) because it is convinced that “France is a very open, vibrant market”, as its Managing Director Leo Sun puts it.
These days of course, you may choose to buy a “smart telephone” online, as in just a few years e-commerce has become a way of life in France. Nearly half the population regularly shops online: FEVAD[2] found that there were 25 million cybershoppers in the first quarter of 2010. According to the Centre for Retail Research, online sales jumped 33% in 2009 and are expected to grow 31.4% this year. This is a bigger leap than in the United Kingdom (12.4%) and Germany (17.2%).
The French are big internet consumers: of the 35.9 million internet users recorded last April, 75% log on every day. And they are quickly learning new ways to use the web. For example, crowd-funding websites in the culture industry are scoring a resounding success. MyMajorCompany.com for instance has helped launch 23 artists since it went online and now has almost 70,000 cyber-producers.
The French have also readily taken to internet shopping, which has now become a way of life. Rakuten, which operates the largest e-commerce site in Japan, has been quick to react, snapping up the French eBay rival PriceMinister for approximately €200 million. Amazon have also been swayed by the prospects for e-commerce in France and will be opening a new European distribution center this year in Montélimar (Rhône-Alpes).
The general public loves digital technology, but so too do companies such as American start-up Brightcove, which provides companies with a software platform for storing video content and which has just started operating in France. “Companies are surfing on these new usages,” says its CEO Jeremy Allaire.
While French businesses and the general public are open to new technologies, the government is also on board. The digital economy has become a national priority, with Digital Plan 2012 and €4.5 billion in funding to be allocated from the “National Loan” bond issue.
France has a qualified workforce – the OECD[3] ranks France second in the world for its proportion of graduates in science and technology subjects – and with world-class innovation clusters like Minalogic, SCS and System@tic combined with a solid policy of government support, France offers a climate that couldn’t be more ideal for multinational businesses. American giant Microsoft is a case in point – in 2007 it created a joint laboratory with INRIA[4] in computational sciences and opened a European technological center in 2008 at the High Tech Arc-de-Seine cluster in Issy-les-Moulineaux.
Interesting? To find out more, take a look at the:
- Information and communication technologies market report
- France: a paradise for data centers blog post
[1] European Information Technology Observatory
[2] Fédération du e-commerce et de la vente à distance (Federation of e-commerce and mail order commerce)
[3] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
[4] Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique (French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control)
