Management Toolkit

Europe sees rise in R&D spending

Tim Ferguson silicon.com

Published: 09 Oct 2007 09:04 BST

Research and development investment from European Union-based companies has increased by 7.4 percent in the past financial year, but it continues to lag behind non-EU competitors.

The R&D spend growth for the top 1,000 non-EU companies was 10 percent, according to the 2007 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard.

But the latest EU figures are an improvement on 2006 when R&D spending from the top 1,000 EU companies grew by 5.3 percent.

EU commissioner for science and research, Janez Potočnik, said the positive upward trend in R&D investment over the past two years is encouraging and claimed the EU's innovation strategy is "on the right track".

But Potočnik added that the only way for Europe to improve its R&D performance is for more companies to see the benefit of investing.

The European Commission attributes part of the gap in investment to the higher growth of R&D-intensive sectors outside the EU.

In general, the pharmaceutical and biotech industry overtook the technology hardware and equipment sector for R&D spending growth.

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Globally, US car-maker Ford lost its top spot to pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer, which spent €5.8bn (£4bn). Top in the EU was DaimlerChrysler of Germany with €5.2bn.

In terms of tech companies, Microsoft was fourth of the non-EU companies, investing the equivalent of €5.4bn in R&D. Intel was eighth, spending €4.4bn and IBM was ninth with €4.3bn.

In Europe, Nokia was number six with €3.7bn and Ericsson was ninth, spending just under €3bn.

Other tech companies in the European top 50 include Alcatel Lucent, BT, SAP and Siemens.

In total the 2,000 Scoreboard companies spent €372bn on R&D during the 2006/07 financial year.

The Investment Scoreboard is produced as part of the European Commission's Industrial Research Investment Monitoring activity.