Vienna’s position as CEE’s ICT capital has suffered quite a blow by IBM’s announcement to move its CEE headquarters to Prague. Beware: I love Prague, I live there, but the decision’s wording “to move growth market activities to growth markets” sounds rather shallow if applied to the Czech Republic. Sure the country has growth potentials that the EU15 have lost long ago, but then why not move IBM CEE to Ukraine or Russia right away?
Archive for the 'Facts, figures & trends' CategoryPage 2 of 2
I was in Prague earlier this month conducting a partner search for a social networking company. While I cannot comment on the specifics of that business, I can pass on a few observations about the Central European Internet market.
The online populations of Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Austria are relatively small. They are linguistically and culturally isolated. Even the Austrians, who share a common language with Germany and part of Switzerland, prefer to use Austrian websites. This limits the scale of any online business that addresses a single Central European market.
However, it would be a mistake to conclude that there aren’t any decent opportunities in these markets.
I am very glad to have the opportunity to be a nowEurope contributor. With my first article and warm welcome I would like to call your attention to global warming, in particular to the ICT aspects of the combat against climate change.
As part of its effort to combat climate change, the European Commission recently announced that it would promote the use of ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) to improve energy efficiency throughout the economy.
Continue reading ‘ICT to combat climate change’
As part of the NETIES project, we have conducted a survey of small and medium sized enterprises interested in participating in Sixth Framework funded projects. This survey was carried out in Hungary, in parallel with our colleagues in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
This research was conducted in two parts. The first survey, summarized here, collected information from companies and organizations interested in taking part in an FP6 funded project. The second survey researched those who had previously taken part in a project.
One insight of this survey is that two-thirds of respondents (64%) had little or no knowledge about the FP6 programme, while 56% were interested in receiving information online.
Continue reading ‘Survey One results: Companies interested in applying for FP6′
As part of the NETIES project, we have conducted a survey of small and medium sized enterprises interested in participating in Sixth Framework funded projects. This survey was carried out in Hungary, in parallel with our colleagues in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
This research was conducted in two parts. The first survey gathered information from companies and organizations interested in taking part in an FP6 funded project. The second survey, summarized here, researched those who had previously taken part in a project.
One insight of this survey is the high level of satisfaction among Hungarian companies taking part in FP6. Nearly one third of companies (29%) rated their FP6 participation a ‘four’ on an ascending value scale of one to four, while 48% gave it a ‘three’. A full 90% agreed they would do it all over again, if given the chance.
A total of 39 companies took part in this survey, which was carried out in partnership with the Hungarian Association of IT Companies (IVSZ).
Continue reading ‘Survey Two results: Companies which have successfully applied for FP6 support’
Around 1% of Polish Internet users have made a purchase online. Of those, 40% made their first purchase within the last six months. A third of Polish shoppers declared that they intend to increase their number of online purchases. These figures come from a 2005 survey of Polish eCommerce conducted by Polish web measurements company, Gemius, in association with Money.pl.
What struck me is that the most popular method of advertising among Polish emerchants is paid search. Here in Hungary, my impression is that local advertisers have been relatively slow to adopt search, however I haven’t seen any recent figures on the Hungarian market for paid search.
For a small country with insufficient pool of human resources, pan-European programmes such as Framework Programme (FP) represent an excellent possibility to embark on collaborative R&D projects and exploit their part of research capacities. For researchers the collaborative projects represent a possibility to do the best research together with excelling research partners, for SMEs the projects provide unique opportunity to share risks of their R&D with EU funding, but also create strong partnerships with possible end users and address future markets.
On the other hand, limited funds (tentatively, the budget of FP6 is less than 5% of all EU Member States R&D spending) and high interest amongst FP constituency underline very competitive nature of participation in the programme. With average success rates well below one fourth, it is the programme for the very best and experienced. Frequently, it applies also for countries – countries with higher innovation capacity, strong science and technology coordination policies and experienced support structures have also leading edge in Framework Programme, as their competitive position is better suited to the very nature of the programme. Thus, the chances of new member states to be particularly successful in FP is more a wishful thinking than current reality, as framework for participation in those countries is different.
Continue reading ‘Estonian participation in FP6, current status’
Slovakia belongs to the less developed countries among EU and OECD member states in usage of Internet. Today the CTK - Czech Press Agency, has presented latest OECD statistical data on Internet usage for business in all OECD member states. In Slovakia, near to 30% of enterprises (exactly 28.7%) with 10+ employees do not use Internet for business - it is the lowest position in OECD ranking. For your information, our NETIES research, which was made last year among TOP 185 highest ranked SMEs, concluded with figure 29.19% (54 of 185 slovak SMEs do not use Internet). It was presented by NETIES team also in April 2005 during eGovernment workshop in Prague.
Continue reading ‘Latest OECD Research supports NETIES Statistics in Slovakia’
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