I know that many of you, like me, attended the very well-organised launch of TechUK on 7th Nov and listened to Secretary of State for Business, Vince Cable. I took away a number of really interesting points. It was about that time that the New York major Michael Bloomsberg said that that London was the best place to setup a new tech company outside of Silicon Valley. Cable pointed out that the UK had over 30 tech hubs. We often think of just Tech City or Cambridge. But there are many others like the digital media hub in Manchester (around the BBC) and in Aberdeen for the oil industry
But the statement from Cable that really got my interest was when he said "The UK is the highest net exporter of technology & information services in the G7." Indeed many readers questioned me on whether this could possibly be true.
TechUK CEO Julian David kindly provided me with the source for this claim. It from the Information Economy Strategy (June 2013) Report with data from the BIS analysis of ONS Balance of Payments.
The full quote reads:
"Among the G7 nations the UK is the highest net exporter of computer and information services. In 2011 the UK exported telecoms services worth around £5 billion, computer services worth around £7 billion and information services of around £2 billion."
This is a little bit more believable as it relates to ICT Services and includes telecommunications services from the likes of BT – not hardware, software or other related revenue sources. The UK has long been a leader in IT services – it’s just that all our great IT Services companies have been bought by global companies. But, of course, even then their exports are classed as from the UK even if their ownership isn’t. A similar situation occurs in the motor manufacturing industry too.