I was quite surprised when I saw this chart today as there are a few companies in this top ten list of biggest corporate R&D investors that I would not have expected. I expected Toyota there, the Swiss pharmaceutical companies Roche and Novartis but for sure not GM and Ford. Guess they kept it a secret what they all do with this huge amount of R&D money. Also surprising was Nokia being ranked second even. Also here the pure amount of the investments says nothing about its quality and success.

Looks like ever since Nokia closed down its mobile phone manufacturing plant in Bochum, Germany, whatever the Finnish company does that looks only slightly controversial, the German public jumps at it vigorously.

This just happened once again in German’s IT portal Heise Online (where comments on news articles are well known for being quite direct and often aggressive, using vulgar language as well). A news article saying that Nokia was pushing the Finnish government to pass a law that would allow it to screen e-mails of its employees generated 400 — mostly hate — comments on Heise Online.

While Nokia won’t make the masses in Germany their friends anymore, also due to the way they handled the closure of the mobile phone plant, I think they should have the right to screen e-mails for suspicious recipients such as competitors’. Espionage by Chinese companies is big. Huawei in particular is known to have copied Cisco routers one-to-one, incl. all its manuals and of course bugs as well. They also copied Ericsson’s GSM network elements and are now only replacing SW parts with their own developments as I heard from some insider sources.

That Nokia seems to have similar issues with Huawei is not surprising. To think though that they could protect themself by screening e-mails I think is a bit naive. Someone stealing design insights would hardly use company e-mails to do so.

This announcement two days ago could be interesting.  Still this news has not really triggered any comments at all on the tech blogs, everybody from Engadget, Phone Scoop, phone Arena, Unwired View, ZDET etc. only repeated the press release content and all you can read as a “comment” was, “do you feel saver already?” or “Nokia has not announced any pricing yet”.

On Securitas‘ website I could not find anything at all. The last press release is from Dec 29, which looks like that they are still on vacation.

This is a classical example of how to NOT do a press release. If you have nothing to say then you should not try to say something in a press release and waste money and time. How much more powerful could this have been by showing a practical use case, having quoted a client, show some pictures or videos that go along with it etc. etc. and of course use online marketing and PR as well.

Nokia is in the tech market quite an old-style company with not much sex or any appeal. If they continue with this it will be easy for the Apple’s of the world to beat such a company who excels in one only: producing the world’s lowest COGS mobile phones.

If you meet them tell them please, as someone needs to wake them up I think.

While Europe excelled in old style industries such as automobiles (which are now facing lots of problems), it seems to be a much smaller player in IT, Internet and - data-communications. So is that perception based on reality or just what we read and see every day? Let’s first look at what I experience daily - and I might not be so untypical, I would think.

Lenovo laptop used. OK, this is a shared China-US domain. Now Lenovo is a China-based company, manufacturing is done in China but I think still designed in the US. Lots of components are from US companies like Intel CPU, NVIDIA video processor and the Windows operating system. The software I am using is mainly a US domain too: Mozilla Firefox, Seamonkey e-mail client, Microsoft Office, online calendar, web collaboration, VoIP (Skype is US owned now), web presentation, photo sharing, online CRM; Ok I think you’ve got the picture (for the record: my security software is from Europe).

Now let’s look at my mobile connectivity: Apple iPhone, Samsung D600. Sorry, Opera guys, but you do not show up, although you need to be mentioned here as the number one mobile browser vendor. Noteworthy is one of the biggest success stories here though: ARM, the Intel of mobile phones and of course Nokia - who will face quite some challenges from Apple mainly.

Things look a little bit different, though, behind the scenes. While my Swisscom last-mile provider is definitely a Cisco shop, they work with Nokia Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent I think for the mobile infrastructure. OK, here we are still present but Chinese guys are on our heels (Huawei and ZTE).

So overall, a mostly lost game, although things look a bit more friendly in business software with many local “no-name” players and SAP as a powerhouse even now. Of course Oracle, HP and IBM are rolling up the little players here, too, and will do so more in 2009.

Looking at the above, while we do not have the same problems with basic infrastructure such as airports, railway systems or mobile and fixed line telecom systems, I think we also will need a reboot for the IT, Internet and datacom industries.

I therefore call for a bail out plan for the IT industries in Europe. Use the money to catch up again and set ambitious goals. Along the same lines are recent calls for supporting the space programs in Germany with a plan to fly to the moon. At first I had a good laugh, asking myself “when was it again that they first landed on the moon? Why would hundred of millions spent to do something that is the same as others did nearly 40 years ago be any good for general competitiveness? But the good thing is that for once they are trying to come up with a general plan for high-tech too (and not only for the bank and automobile vendors)- Even if the first ideas seem a joke maybe it could lead in the right direction once they start thinking some more?

One thing I can say for sure: If the US. thinks they can reboot from their total current mess, then it should be possible to have a reboot of the IT industry in Europe and come back as well.