CORDIS Archive

EIMS Studies
Strategies for the Future - Innovation in the European Telecom Equipment Industry

This report evaluates the innovative activities and strategies of the European telecom equipment sector, which includes line telephony, radio communication, and TV and radio broadcasting equipment. Part One examines publicly available data on production, trade, patents and technological trends, while Part Two presents the results of analyses of the 1993 Community Innovation Survey(CIS). The CIS provides data on the innovative strategies in 1992 of up to 210 European telecom equipment manufactures in Norway and in six EU countries, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Belgium, that were responsible for 80 % of total telecom equipment production in the EU in 1992. The timing of the CIS survey provides a snapshot of conditions in the European telecom equipment sector before the liberalisation and privatisation of telecom services in most European countries.

The analysis of the CIS data are limited to six topics of interest to policy that were identified in part I. These are :

• Innovative status and innovative success.
• Types of innovation activities.
• Sources of technical information and new technologies.
• Innovation goals.
• Regulations and other factors hampering innovation.
• Export rate.

Main findings

The main findings of the report are:

• Europe occupied a fairly comfortable position in the world league of Telecom Equipment manufacturers. Four EU firms had 42% of the world sales in 1990.
  
  
• Apart from 1993, the industry's production had been growing steadily but this was shadowed by a decrease in employment.
  
  
• The European Patent Office recorded an 319% increase in patent applications relevant to Telecom between 1980 and 1991. This was largely due to US and Japanese firms seeking protection for their innovations in Europe.
  
  
• The technical capabilities of the European telecom equipment firms were concentrated in the network based markets with major weaknesses in integrating telecom with computers and software.
  
  
• The European lead in telecommunication technology is narrowing. EU programmes such as RACE and ESPRIT supports such work.
  
  
• The European lag with US and Asian competitors in the complementary computing and software technologies is not narrowing.
  
  
• Alliances between EU companies and other non EU companies are common and will remain an important feature of the industry for the present.
  
  
• Previously, European industry controlled the content and pace of development of standards. This is changing and may have important consequences for the industry.

Whilst the authors point out that the issue of relevant forms of intellectual property rights is of interest to this sector, the issue is not dealt with in this report.

Empirical studies and the Community Innovation Survey (CIS)