France to turn digital by 2020

October 12, 2014 - France is one of the countries at the forefront of digitalization and intends to achieve much more by 2020. With 8% of its total private-sector added value, and contributing to a quarter of its economic growth, the digital development is booming within the French economy. It represented 16% of its productive investments in 2010.

Several digital clusters have been established throughout the country, gathering universities, partnering public-private research centers, universities and industry on highly specialized digital sectors: content and multimedia distribution (CAP DIGITAL), communications networks and digital imaging technologies (IMAGES ET RESEAUX), innovation in intelligent miniaturized products and service for industry (IMAGES ET RESEAUX), design and development of secure processing and communications solutions (Secure Communication Solutions),and finally complex systems and generic software (SYSTEMATIC). 

The NTIC sector is expanding steadily, with a high speed Internet penetration rate in France ranked second in the EU (35.9% in 2011, source OECD), a booming e-commerce sector that created 66,000 jobs and attracted 31 million online purchasers. A 20% growth is expected between 2013 and 2015 (Xerfi forecasts).

To sustain this growth, the French government included an ambitious digital strategy within its National Investment Programme, that included ‘cloud’ development, an RanD programme for the French video game industry, ranked second in Europe, with famous companies like Ubisoft or Vivendi. It also launched in December 2013 the Worldwide Innovation Challenge to encourage talent and sustain growth. 625 projects have been received by the French Public Investment Bank, including digital medicine (A3 Surgical), robotics (Blue Frog Robotics), human recognition (IRLYNX), but also digital financing (ANATEC, proposing advanced personal management) and bid data analysis (Neoledge).

The French government is not staying idle and is stimulating the development of the digital sector by more initiatives. The FrenchTech was launched by Fleur Pellerin, Secretary of State for Foreign Trade, and aims at supporting successful start-ups with a 200 million investment funding and turn France into a “digital republic”. A digital Plan 2012-2020 is set, to include 57 target reforms, such as making administrative formalities paperless by 2020 (80% of public services are already accessible online) and  provide very high speed bandwidth (optical fiber and 4G) to cover the entire country by 2025.

State of the art digital companies are receptive to these initiatives, with many multinational companies now having offices in France, such as Yahoo, Celum France, WaveSoftware, TurboHercules, etc. The Smart Technologies Group chose Paris area for its Europe, Middle East and Africa office in 2008. Google also opened its new offices in Paris in December 2011, following an investment of 100 million dollars, while Intel opened a specialized facility in Nice for wireless technologies. The Greater Paris should be able to attract more and more digital companies as it is aiming to become a digital city, with world-class clusters within its suburbs.