Europe has lost the mobile-technology edge it gained with the development of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), according to Stephen Fidler, Brussels Editor of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. And now, he writes from the World Economic Forum in Davos, ascendant U.S. technology companies are worried about a backlash.
Fidler notes that the car industry is the largest employer, but future profits will largely come not from punching metal but from network management and catering to passengers with entertainment and retail experiences. The question is how to implement these new potential sources of profit.
He quotes Günther Oettinger, the European Union’s digital-economy commissioner, as saying, “My expectation is that our European car producers are able, are willing to survive and to integrate Google and not be secondary. I have many weekly discussions with members of the boards of these companies….They say Google or Facebook and Apple are invited, but not to have them take over, but to have a clear partnership where our European companies are in the lead.”
Europe could respond by implementing data-handling standards, for example, that American firms couldn’t or wouldn’t meet, Fidler writes. That approach could present its own problems. He cites a 1984 law that aimed to protect Brazil’s computer industry, which by 1990 had left the country “…in a world of green screens and flashing cursors.”
He cites one example that yielded unintended consequences: Google shutting down its news service in Spain ahead of implementation of a new law.
Fidler writes, “What’s better for growth in Europe and for European tech companies, say American tech executives in Davos, is for economies to build on existing state-of-the-art technologies.”
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