Why do you think EU is behind in tech? As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the lithography machines used by all state of the art IC nodes is designed in Europe. It’s one of the most complex machines on the planet.
Then there’s mega projects like LHC and ITER (international projects, but it’s not pure chance that they’re located in Europe) and Wendelstein 7-X.
My pet example is Nordic Semiconductor, which has an insanely good position in the Bluetooth LE device market. What’s also interesting is that two of the major competitors also design their chips in Norway. Although those companies do illustrate one problem in Norway (and perhaps Europe in general): the lack of capital at certain stages. In the IC businesses it seems most companies are acquired by US companies eventually.
Let’s look at EVs. Europe doesn’t have Tesla. But seems like most European car makers are doing OK with EVs. Arguably better than US incumbent car makers. VWs new platform is one of the most promising right now, although this project has shown that VW has a problem with software engineering. But so does most other older car companies in the world. There are also some interesting start ups that’s more focused on designing/supplying components, such as Rimac and Kreisel. Rimac seems to go toe-to-toe with Tesla on extreme performance.
I believe a lot of robots used in advanced manufacturing is German as well?
In general I have the impression that Europe is very strong in designing/making components and manufacturing machines and such. Things that the end consumer never hears about. Very few have heard about ASML, but everyone has heard about Intel. So maybe that contributes to the impression that EU is behind on tech.
Europe has also been ahead of the US in adopting tech on the consumer side in several areas. The US was in the stone age for a long time when it came to banking and payment for instance.
Why people have this perception seems pretty clear to me. Just comparing Europe to the US:
The US has both the major desktop/laptop CPU designers, as well as both desktop/laptop GPU designers. Of the three major desktop/laptop OSes, two are American, and the last doesn't belong to any particular country, but the primary creator moved from Europe to the US permanently.
The two major smartphone OSes are made by American companies. Two biggest browsers, again, Americans. Maybe three, if you count Mozilla (though Samsung is probably around there as well).
Huge internet/software tech companies that consumers interact with? Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple are all American. Europe has no equivalent to these, all they can boast is a few smaller ones like Spotify, or business facing giants like SAP (equivalent to that in the US would probably be like Oracle or IBM).
While obviously Europe doesn't have a complete dearth of local software, in terms of major consumer hits, especially the kind that get play outside of the region they originated in -- not much of that going on.
Also, I work at Google Munich, and it's pretty telling how rare it is for people here to get 'poached' by other local tech companies. It happened to a few people I knew...to go to Lyft's Munich office. Other than that, I can't think of any. When it comes to enticing engineers, there just aren't any German tech companies that play in the same league as Google.
The market defines behind "ahead/behind" by market value. None of the top 5 market caps in Europe are in tech. They are Nestle, Roche, Total SA, Novartis, and LVMH. They are tiny in comparison to the US tech giants.
All the anecdotal evidence you provide is nice, but is not represented in the market.
An example you give, Nordic Semiconductor, has a market cap of $3B.
Here's a good list of the worlds largest tech companies. The first European entry is #14, ASML:
Allowing companies to grow to the size of Facebook/Apple etc. is more and more being clearly demonstrated to be a bad thing.
The last time the relative size of US tech giants to EU companies was brought up here, a commentator replied that EU law is designed to prevent companies growing to this kind of outlandish size. I have no idea if that's true or not, but if so, it seems like a prudent approach even if we miss out on brownie points of getting to claim "ours is biggest". As others have pointed out here, the EU is not behind technologically. All we're behind on is company size, and I'm ok with that.
Then there’s mega projects like LHC and ITER (international projects, but it’s not pure chance that they’re located in Europe) and Wendelstein 7-X.
My pet example is Nordic Semiconductor, which has an insanely good position in the Bluetooth LE device market. What’s also interesting is that two of the major competitors also design their chips in Norway. Although those companies do illustrate one problem in Norway (and perhaps Europe in general): the lack of capital at certain stages. In the IC businesses it seems most companies are acquired by US companies eventually.
Let’s look at EVs. Europe doesn’t have Tesla. But seems like most European car makers are doing OK with EVs. Arguably better than US incumbent car makers. VWs new platform is one of the most promising right now, although this project has shown that VW has a problem with software engineering. But so does most other older car companies in the world. There are also some interesting start ups that’s more focused on designing/supplying components, such as Rimac and Kreisel. Rimac seems to go toe-to-toe with Tesla on extreme performance.
I believe a lot of robots used in advanced manufacturing is German as well?
In general I have the impression that Europe is very strong in designing/making components and manufacturing machines and such. Things that the end consumer never hears about. Very few have heard about ASML, but everyone has heard about Intel. So maybe that contributes to the impression that EU is behind on tech.
Europe has also been ahead of the US in adopting tech on the consumer side in several areas. The US was in the stone age for a long time when it came to banking and payment for instance.
How do you measure being behind/ahead in tech?