Hundreds of new UK tech jobs announced at CeBIT 2014
Hundreds of new UK jobs have been announced as the UK takes centre stage as official partner country at CeBIT 2014.
Hundreds of new UK jobs have been announced as the UK takes centre stage as official partner country at CeBIT 2014, the world’s largest technology trade fair.
Opening CeBIT 2014 alongside the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prime Minister David Cameron said:
Four years ago, we put in place a long-term economic plan to turn our country around – and innovation is right at the heart of that plan.
It is our ambition to make the UK the most digital nation in the G8 and it is my mission to show the world that we’re getting there.
Announcements made at CeBIT include:
- over the coming year the Technology Strategy Board will continue to sponsor innovation in the Internet of Things by committing a further £45 million via a range of its funding tools and programmes, bringing government investment in this area to £73 million. The Internet of Things could allow billions of everyday objects to talk to each other over the internet using low-cost, low-power chips. This includes electricity meters that talk to the grid to get the best deals, health monitors that keep an eye on heart rate and even a fridge that can order milk when it notices it getting low
- the government is also launching a new European Internet of Things funding competition, designed to support young, early stage companies in the Shoreditch and Cambridge tech clusters. The competition will receive £1 million of funding from the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board and run in conjunction with Tech City UK
- a new research collaboration focused on the industrial and societal impacts which 5G will bring has been announced between the University of Dresden, King’s College University in London and the University of Surrey. With 4G, an 800 megabyte movie takes around 40 seconds to download; with 5G that would be cut to 1 second
- fuelled by an increasing number of devices and uses, mobile broadband usage is expected to increase by 80 times by 2030. The government has published an ambitious strategy that will put the UK at the forefront of the global telecommunications market and contribute an extra £50 billlion a year to the UK economy. The Spectrum Strategy sets out how the UK will lead the development of 5G mobile technology and double the contribution to the UK economy of spectrum to £100 billion by 2025
- the government has also published an update on work to release 500MHz of public sector spectrum by 2020
- the UK’s innovation and tech sector is worth £58 billion and employs 1.3 million people. To grow the sector further the government has launched a new commercially focused science and innovation organisation, the UKTI Innovation Gateway. The organisation will be a ‘one-stop-shop’ for securing science and innovation investment from large international funds and corporate companies. Over the next 2 years the organisation is tasked with unlocking £1 billion of investment and creating 500 new UK jobs.
- leading digital medicines company Proteus Digital Health™ will employ 200 highly skilled individuals at its first international manufacturing site in the UK. The facility will serve as a hub for the global digital medicines industry, transferring significant investment and know-how to the UK
Trade and Investment Minister, Lord Livingston, is speaking at the event alongside British tech leaders including Joanna Shields, UK Business Ambassador for the Digital Industries and Chairman of Tech City UK and Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Chairman and Co-Founder of the Open Data Institute who will demo a 3D hologram to underpin the UK’s strength in big data and robotics.
Lord Livingston said:
Our expertise in the innovation and tech sector is creating growth and jobs for the UK economy. We have the leading market for software and IT services in Europe, the largest network of Wi-Fi hotspots and 1 of the biggest app markets.
Our aim is to grow investment in the UK innovation and tech sector and today (10 March 2014) we are launching a new organisation targeting international businesses that want to take advantage of UK excellence and invest here.
Notes to Editors:
1.The Technology Strategy Board is the UK’s innovation agency. Its goal is to accelerate economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy.
2.Proteus Digital Health™ Proteus Digital Health™ is partnering with Eastern Academic Health Science Network, The Northern Health Science Alliance and Oxford University, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust and Oxford Academic Health Science Network. The partnership was facilitated by NHS England and the Life Science Investment Organisation of UKTI.
Proteus Digital Health™ is pioneering a new category of products, services and data systems based on ingestible computing. Its core technology – the digital health feedback system – provides an unprecedented view into an individual’s personal health choices and physiologic response, allowing patients to better manage their health and more effectively collaborate with caregivers and clinicians, while enabling new information-based business models. Proteus has received a CE mark in Europe and FDA market clearance in the U.S. for its wearable and Ingestible Sensor™ devices. Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., Proteus is privately held and funded by Carlyle, Essex Woodlands, Kaiser Permanente®, Medtronic®, Novartis®, Otsuka®, Oracle®, ON Semiconductor® and other investors.
3.Public Sector Spectrum Release Programme The government has today issued an update on Public Sector Spectrum Release Programme (PSSRP). The report provides an update on the government’s plans for meeting its commitment to release up to 500MHz of public sector spectrum by 2020, opening up this spectrum to businesses that can use it to drive growth and innovation. It details some of the lessons learned so far in carrying out the work, which are also reflected in the Spectrum Strategy, and the next steps for the remainder of the programme. These plans were first published in March 2011, following the government announcement in the 2010 Spending Review. The PSSRP is programme-managed by Shareholder Executive in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
4.Innovation is GREAT The UK Government’s ‘Innovation is GREAT’ campaign seeks to improve international perceptions of UK innovation, promoting the UK as partner of choice in the design, building and commercialisation of new technologies and products, whilst unlocking significant trade and investment opportunities. The campaign is anticipated to deliver investment of up to £50 million.
Run by the ‘UKTI Innovation Gateway’, the ‘Innovation is GREAT’ campaign will deliver a coordinated message about the world-leading strengths of the UK innovation system based around the 8 GREAT technologies in key events in 10 international markets, to raise awareness internationally and attract further innovation investment and stimulate trade.
5.UK SME competitions UKTI, working with partners, supported 2 national competitions to bring leading SMEs and research organisations to CeBIT. 24 of the most innovative UK SMEs pitched for a free place at the fair and the competition focused on themes linked to the overall CeBIT programme: Mobile, Big Data, Social, Cloud and Smart Cities. For both competitions, the prize included a stand pod place with branding, listing in the UK event directory and complementary exhibition passes. Winners include: Focal Point Software, SoDash, Tento Technologies and Peachinc. 12 exemplars of UK science and innovation strengths, academic and business, are exhibiting in Hall 9 alongside Tech City UK and the Connected Digital Economy Catapult.
6.Tech City The UK Government-backed Tech City UK, near the site of the London 2012 Olympic Games, is 1 of the UK’s most dynamic areas, attracting high levels of investment. It started out in 2006 as a handful of tech companies, and has since grown organically into the current cluster of more than 1,200 technology, digital and creative firms including global leaders such as Google, Cisco and Amazon. The site is 1 of the largest concentrations of fast-growing digital technology companies in Europe.
7.CeBIT Programme UKTI, the ICT KTN and techUK are partnering to deliver a comprehensive programme during CeBIT featuring the opening ceremony itself, UK pavilions in Halls 6 and 9, a British Business Lounge with seminars and networking events and the UK/Germany Technology Summit. Nearly 130 UK based companies will be exhibiting at CeBIT 2014, more than double last year’s total, with 3 times as much exhibition space.
8.UKTI UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) is the government department that helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy. We also help overseas companies bring their high quality investment to the UK’s economy – acknowledged as Europe’s best place from which to succeed in global business. UKTI offers expertise and contacts through its extensive network of specialists in the UK, and in British embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world. We provide companies with the tools they require to be competitive on the world stage.
UKTI has established a dedicated unit focused on UK life science - the UKTI Life Science Investment Organisation (LSIO). The LSIO works with overseas companies to identify research, development and delivery partners and provides support in every element of investing and working in the UK. For more information on UKTI, visit www.ukti.gov.uk or visit the online newsroom at www.ukti.gov.uk/media.
9.The UK is Europe’s leading market for software and IT services, with a market value of £58 billion per annum, employing 1.3 million people
10.The internet economy’s contribution to UK GDP is growing at 10.9% annually, higher than the G20 average and almost double the growth of China
11.The UK’s e-commerce market already employs 1m people across the country and comprises 250,000 SME online retailers, with £1 in every £5 of UK spending being conducted online
12.The UK was the leading G20 country in the ‘2013 Global Innovation Index’.
13.We have also been the top destination for inward investment in R&D in Europe for 12 years in a row. 43% of new inward investment projects with HQ operations have located in the UK, consistently higher than any other location in Europe.
14._20% of the UK workforce is employed in science-based occupations within research and related industries.
15.The UK has the highest proportion of computing, mathematics and statistics doctoral graduates among the comparator OECD countries: around 2.2 per 100,000 compared to Germany’s 1.6.
16.Foreign-owned companies invested £8.8 billion in R&D in the UK in 2011, up by 33% year-on-year.
17.The UK is Europe’s leading market for software and IT services, with a market value of £58 billion per annum.
18.In the 2012 Autumn Statement, UKTI was awarded an additional £70 million for each of 2013/14 and 2014/15, enabling the recruitment of more international trade advisers around the country, expansion of existing services including the Trade Access Programme (TAP) and the Overseas Market Introduction Service (OMIS), and support to expand the range of assistance available to UK companies through overseas British chambers of commerce.
19.The government’s economic policy objective is to achieve ‘strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared across the country and between industries’. It set 4 ambitions in the ‘Plan for Growth’, published at Budget 2011:
- to create the most competitive tax system in the G20
- to make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business
- to encourage investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy
- to create a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe
Work is underway across government to achieve these ambitions, including progress on more than 250 measures as part of the Growth Review. Developing an Industrial Strategy gives new impetus to this work by providing businesses, investors and the public with more clarity about the long-term direction in which the government wants the economy to travel.