Re: Perhaps once burned?
One person's aspirations can be another person's prime example of commercial folly.
British investors are seemingly pretty cynical and hard nosed. It might be cool and sexy to be able to fab a 3 nanometer chip and sling it in an iPhone, but if someone else is already doing that, there's not going to be any good return on that investment.
Basically, there is more money to be made turning someone else's components into things that are hard to make than there is in making the components themselves, especially if there is an oversupply of components. So, many would say, "Why would we want to waste our time and money investing huge sums in a saturated market where there is already huge investments going in to make that oversupply worse?".
In recent decades realism has paid off. The satellite manufacturering industry is busy, profitable, and hugely effective on the world market. The aerospace industry is worth more than it ever was, even if we don't build whole aircraft. And so forth.
This does mean British investors miss things; Psion basically pioneered a lot of what we now consider commonplace, but it's all done abroad... The best place to put money is in something new, not copy cat ideas.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
