Developing Mobile Computing Solutions in a Key Global Test Market

Global high-tech companies are attracted by Sweden's high penetration rates, having made the Stockholm region a key test market for innovative global computing solutions. The development of this test market environment was enabled by Sweden's highly demanding consumers, who are known to be early adopters of commercial technologies, and a strong national communications infrastructure, a priority to the government for many decades. In large parts of Sweden, especially to the north of the country, the population density drops to about three inhabitants per square kilometer, as approximately 25% of the Swedish population lives around the city of Stockholm. Communication has thus always been a prime concern to the Swedish people. As early as 1909, the city of Stockholm had 60 telephones per 1,000 inhabitants, while Berlin had 18, Paris had 10, and London merely had only two.

Today, more than 70% of the Swedish population uses mobile telephones and more than 50% of the population aged 16 years and older use the Internet. However, the fastest -growing segment of surfers on the Web at 80% growth in 1999, were the 50 to 79 year olds, driven in part by SeniorNet, ^[4] a national nonprofit organization set up in 1997 to promote ICT usage by everyone over 55 years of age.

Information and communications technologies are regarded by the Swedish government as key to the development of the remote regions of the country, which include hundreds of marginally inhabited islands that scatter the Swedish coastline. With the development of wireless hyper-LAN technologies capable of several kilometers of transmission range, Sweden plans to connect all of its inhabitants to the information age and is already preparing to do so by laying far-reaching loops of fiber optic cables across the distant regions of the country.

As illustrated by our next market highlight, since the economic crisis in 1992, Sweden's high penetration rates, demanding customers, regionally dispersed demographics , and supportive government have caused foreign direct high-tech investment to the region to boom.