back to article UK tech sector facing structural difficulties, says analyst firm

While US tech stocks have suffered in response to rising inflation, interest rates and general economic uncertainty, the UK tech sector — or what is left of it — is doing worse. An analysis by UK research company Techmarketview has found the tech-focused NASDAQ finished 4.6 percent down month-on-month in August, or 24.5 …

  1. Dr Scrum Master
    Unhappy

    Merkinisation?

    The illustration is of the Left-Pondian institution in the "Meanwhile", when the UK sector in the headline is not illustrated.

    Is this illustrative of the increasing Merkinisation of El Reg?

    1. MyffyW Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Merkinisation?

      You make some interesting points, but I'm struggling to work out what pubic wigs have to do with this?

      (mine is the one with the stars and stripes on it)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I'm struggling to work out what pubic wigs have to do with this?

        Well, I heard* that Dabbsy refused to wear one whilst producing his column, which is why they got rid of him.

        .

        .

        .

        [*] Not really.

        1. Al fazed
          Happy

          Re: I'm struggling to work out what pubic wigs have to do with this?

          "Merkin" is UK Grime slang for robbing you, possibly with the aid of srong violence, just for a laugh - of your sodding iPhone...........

          ALF

          1. andreamcdonald

            Re: I'm struggling to work out what pubic wigs have to do with this?

            Merkin is also a fanny wig....

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "Merkin" is UK Grime slang for ...

            Maybe, but apparently also a term describing the family of a mermaid (i.e. mer-kin)

    2. Al fazed
      Facepalm

      Re: Merkinisation?

      Yes, stolen from under our feet, by the leftpondian reporters, who can't even spell "centre" properly, there'll be tears for sure, Dabby's removal means there's so much less relevance in el Reg reflecting a UK way of thinking about IT, or science, or what is important in life in general ...........

      And it ain't the f*cking bottom line.

      ALF (anti-rightpondianishmarshymindmergesof51ststate)

  2. Lordrobot

    When BREXIT and MURICA end your markets you fall like a heap

    BREXIT was intended to make Britain more independent NOT LESS INDEPENDENT. Yet look at this march toward US Statehood! ARM gets sold to the biggest Shyster in Asia. And now the Shyster is working with Goldman to sell it to the USA Exchanges... Muricans are already talking about clearing out Manchester.

    Then UK rejects foreign Capital into an essentially defunct chip facility rather than contemplating that it would be a door to the giant Chinese markets and independent of Murica's tech blocking Nancy Kerrigan kneecapping foreign policy.

    Britain needs to be independent not sacrifice itself to the whims of Donald Trumper and Joe Biten, two of the dumbest persons that ever fell down a ramp or a flight of stairs. What is the end game here to destroy oneself on behalf of assisting Murica's lame attempt at MADE IN MURICA... ARM was Britain's golden goose, the top of the tech pyramid and sacrificed to Murica for NOTHING!

    Bowing to Murica, especially the dumb lot it has become is British Suicide. Boris blocked the best 5G in the world from Huawei because CHINER took Trump to the Trade war Chinese Laundry... and Britain became a Trump slurper. 6 Bankruptcies... you don't take Trump business advice!

    Weapons of Mass Destruction should have been the British last straw but it has only gotten worse.

    1. VoiceOfTruth Silver badge

      Re: When BREXIT and MURICA end your markets you fall like a heap

      "Our" politicians are right in the pocket of the Americans. They take orders from the USA. They don't care two jots for the UK, just which place they get to sit in at the Washington table.

      1. Lars Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: When BREXIT and MURICA end your markets you fall like a heap

        The problem is that they don't understand any other language and anything not English has to be inferior (except for expatting, if only in English).

        It has gone as far as the Tory importing the "Venezuela scare" into British politics, not to mention the domestic Drumpf.

        1. ChoHag Silver badge
          Stop

          Re: When BREXIT and MURICA end your markets you fall like a heap

          17 butthurt Britfags in this thread so far.

          This country's a disgrace and it's not going to get any better while we reject the people telling us so. Even if they're American.

    2. James Anderson

      Re: When BREXIT and MURICA end your markets you fall like a heap

      Sorry but this systematic failure has nothing to do with BREXIT or the EU.

      London has for years been running a massive financial industry whose only purpose is to pay its senior staff massive bonuses. Nothing else! All they know how to do is asset stripping.

      They force companies to make short term gains via cost cutting the result of which is long term decline. When they are no longer profitable they are sold to foreign investors who are only interested in the brand name.

      Think about it the whole world runs on LCDs, lithium batteries and ARM chips. All of which were developed in the UK but not a single UK company makes these. The City of London did not invest a penny in these world changing innovations.

      Solve food poverty eat the Bankers. mmm trader sausages ...

      1. Lars Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: When BREXIT and MURICA end your markets you fall like a heap

        @James Anderson

        Yes I agree with your comment but I would still like to point out than you are a bit careless claiming the lithium batteries are a British invention.

        Please use for instance the Wikipedia to understand the history better.

        It all eventually comes down to this.

        "in 1987, Akira Yoshino patented what would become the first commercial lithium-ion battery using an anode of "soft carbon" (a charcoal-like material) along with Goodenough's previously reported LCO cathode and a carbonate ester-based electrolyte. In 1991, using Yoshino's design, Sony began producing and selling the world's first rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. The following year, a joint venture between Toshiba and Asashi Kasei Co. also released their lithium-ion battery.".

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery

        Also read about the LCD.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-crystal_display

  3. VoiceOfTruth Silver badge

    The UK tech sector, and in general

    There is a malaise about the UK. The corporate thinking is "buy it in". Do we have a tech sector, except for munitions? I would be surprised to find so much as a paper cup bearing the name of a British tech company because I can't think of one. The list of British software is very short, even though that is something that can be done without huge capital outlays. Instead, even "our" parliament gives the IT contract to Microsoft. That's right, all MP's data is safely in American hands.

    I thought that Avast was Czech? If it's the same Avast I have heard of. AVEVA is majority owned by a French (or French based) company. Darktrace is Anglo-American with links to the spooks. So it can probably get a contract for doing unspecified "national security" work if it needs it. Micro Focus has been bought by a Canadian company.

    So where are these British tech companies again? They are about as British as Starbucks.

    And look how stodgy they are! They're not the Google or Apple of today. They're the IBM of yesterday - fairly solid but not really going places. They're not exactly a great opening line with some hot babe or chap you encounter. Oh, you work at... where is it again?

    1. Al fazed
      IT Angle

      Re: The UK tech sector, and in general

      Darktrace ?

      Weren't they Cambridge Anals before they stuck their finger up to the UK go vermins ?

      Just asking........

      ALF

    2. Al fazed
      Thumb Up

      Re: The UK tech sector, and in general

      Sophos is about the only one I can think of.

      ALF

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The UK tech sector, and in general

      There are lots of small UK tech companies, 38,000 new startups registered last year alone. Of the big ones, they include BT, Vodafone, Sage, etc.

      Some of the big US companies are also British-owned, especially in the food & hospitality industries, for example Holiday Inn. It's an international world, people are always happy to buy successful businesses.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: The UK tech sector, and in general

        With the pound tanking, no British company is going to go shopping. What's left will be picked up for a bargain though, and half of that will be shut down by the new owners because the point was to buy them out so they don't compete.

    4. pimppetgaeghsr

      Re: The UK tech sector, and in general

      A handful of shyster apps in and around London and food delivery mechanisms is basically about it.

      Every city-centre is now a moped fest and the physiques around the country show off this new tech revolution.

      Good grief.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No mention of anything even remotely looking like an "industrial strategy"......

    First of all let's look to the industrial past:

    (1) Aerospace: Gloster, Hawker, English Electric, Short Brothers, Blackburn, Fairey, Avro, de Havilland....

    Today: Almost nothing.....building wings for Airbus

    (2) Computing: English Electric, ICL, INMOS.....

    Today: Almost nothing

    (3) Automotive: Long list of current manufacturing....but today EVERY vehicle manufacturing facility is owned elsewhere: France, China, India, Italy, USA.....

    Not only is this industrial landscape either absent or foreign-owned, more worrying is that the lack of these modern industries is in turn doing other harms:

    (4) The lack of industrial heft in modern technologies means that there is a lack of investment in academic institutions which teach current (and build new) technologies

    (5) This hollowing out of both knowledge and academia means that the future of any UK-based technology sector looks pretty bleak (as if items #1, #2 and #3 were not bleak enough)

    Why is there not a published "industrial strategy" which lists components in this order:

    (a) A clear statement that for specific technologies, the UK is determined to become more self-sufficient (perhaps mentioning a budget in the Billions of pounds)

    (b) A focus on emphasising and encouraging and investing in academic institutions which focus on "strategic knowledge" indentified in item (a)

    (c) A focus on encouraging venture capital to invest in spin-offs from these academic institutions (e.g. tax holidays, capital grants...)

    Note that under item (a) it is not my intention to suggest that the UK needs to be self-sufficient in EVERYTHING.....clearly crazy.....but to be MORE self-sufficient in specific reasonably narrow areas.

    Without such a strategy, and likely a twenty or thirty year stated scope, I really do wonder what the state of UK industry, and the state of UK knowledge, will be in thirty years time! It's easy to list what we've lost (items #1, #2 and #3)......but why are we not laying out a plan for what we need to build?

    1. Lars Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: No mention of anything even remotely looking like an "industrial strategy"......

      "..building wings for Airbus".

      That seems to pop up every now and then, but in reality that factory is an Airbus factory fully owned by Airbus.

      While some seem to believe a British company is building wings for Airbus like RR who actually is builds engines for Airbus among others.

      I mention this because some years ago a British kid or gammon, a brexiteer, wrote that should Airbus decide to move the production on wings to mainland Europe then the British would never reveal the technology behind building wings.

      One should not mention or remember idiocy like that but the guy did very well in the number of up votes he got. It wasn't on ElReg.

      "...but why are we not laying out a plan for what we need to build?".

      You are run by happy idiots,

      it's the cost of a two party system with a one part government, fptp and the English plague in the form of Rupert not the reindeer.

      Apart from that I am not all that surprised as +80% of British business is about services and not about industry.

      The Moggs will make it all about shuffling money around simply by just shuffling money around.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No mention of anything even remotely looking like an "industrial strategy"......

        it's the cost of a two party system with a one part government

        Indeed, we should all have super-successful coalition governments, like Italy, Greece, France, etc.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Currency woes weigh everything down

    For those who may have missed it, the Pound is about to hit parity with the Dollar. If we were using Euros, this wouldn't have happened.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Currency woes weigh everything down

      If Britain had a decent exporting industrial base at least that would be competitive due to the currency drop.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Currency woes weigh everything down

      If we were using Euros, this wouldn't have happened.

      The Euro hit parity with the dollar a few weeks ago, and is now below $1.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lots of fast growing firms in the UK

    There are a lot of firms any of us can choose to invest in, they are largely listed on AIM. From Game publishing to FinTech to cyber security to in-game advertising, there's plenty of home grown firms to choose from!

    And we also have a success story in the form of Raspberry Pi too, it's selling like hot cakes all over the world.

  7. andreamcdonald

    With IR35 fully in place, the tech industry is not going to thrive

    The government decided to try and make it as difficult as possible to have a flexible work force that moves where the work is, they own this

    Time to play the worlds smallest violin

  8. andreamcdonald

    IR35 is also a factor, when the inland revenue seem determined to reduce the number of people willing to move around for work, it's not an environment that helps the tech sector

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