ICT account for 25% of total corporate R&D investment in Europe. In 2007, while the ICT sector represented 4.8% of GDP (€540 billion) and 3% of total employment in the EU (6.1 million employees), it accounted for 25% of overall business expenditure in R&D (BERD) and employed 32.4% of all business sector researchers.
The 2010 report on R&D in ICT in the European Union by authors: Geomina Turlea, Daniel Nepelski, Giuditta de Prato, Sven Lindmark, Andrea de Panizza, Lucio Picci, Paul Desruelle, David Broster provides an analysis of R&D investments in the EU Information and Communication Technology sector (ICT sector ).
The research and analysis was carried out by the Information Society Unit at JRC-IPTS in the context of PREDICT, a research project co-financed by JRC-IPTS and the Information Society & Media Directorate General of the European Commission.
This report combines in a unique way three complementary perspectives: national statistics (covering both private and public R&D expenditures), company data, and technology-based indicators. It relies on the latest available official statistics delivered by Member States, Eurostat and the OECD. This data still contains gaps and where this is the case, rigorous cross-checking and estimating methods have been applied by JRC-IPTS to provide the study with the necessary set of data.
Recent global trends in ICT industries
Preliminary information collected by the OECD (2009b, c) shows the severe effects of the recent financial and economic crisis on the ICT sector, although these have been comparatively milder than those of the past dot.com crisis, with recovery already underway in some countries and industries. In broad terms, ICT services performed better than manufacturing and responded more slowly to the global downturn, but there are relevant differences across both industries and regions.
Figure 2-4 shows the evolution of the worldwide semiconductor market since 1990. Production of Semiconductors often anticipates and amplifies global turns: already flat over some quarters since 2006, it dropped sharply from the end of 2008, bringing a drastic reduction to inventories. Sales recuperated in the second and third quarters of 2009. On a yearly basis, though, for 2009 the OECD estimates a shrinkage of at least 20%, which would bring the market value in current US dollars to the year 2000 level, with recovery only visible in 2010 (note that 2009 and 2010 are forecasts at the time of publication).
Figure 2-4: Worldwide semiconductor market by region, 1990–2010
USD billions, current prices
Source: elaborated on OECD (2009b), Fig. 25, based on World Semiconductor Trade Statistics, July 2009.
Sales of IT equipment also dropped in quantity in the last quarter of 2008 (for the first time since 2002) and at the beginning of 2009. Recovery in this area went with a shift towards cheaper products (e.g., netbooks), which, in turn, also brought on a shrinkage in value in the midterm.
Production of communications equipment decelerated towards null growth, while sales values went down for most producers. Mature markets (notably, Western Europe) seem to have suffered more than those in emerging economies, in both the networks and consumer segments (e.g., mobile phones). In this latter area, recovery started in the third quarter of 2009, but at the same time, EU-based companies lost market shares to their Asian and US32 based competitors.49 The production of measurement and precision instruments, mostly tied to industrial demand, went down, but only after the downturn of investment. ICT services, instead, have still retained positive growth, due to Computer Services and Software.
In the second quarter of 2009, employment in ICT manufacturing was about 6-7% lower year-on-year, while in ICT services it kept still or increased slightly in most of the countries surveyed by the OECD, with Computer Services and Software performing better than Telecoms. The US have been particularly affected, with a 10% year-on-year decrease for ICT manufacturing employment in September 2009, and a 2% decrease for ICT services. China’s employment performance in ICT equipment was also worse than its manufacturing average, while IT services continued to be amongst the fastest growing activities.
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