Arguably the most technically advanced EU country Sweden always avoids Franco-German initiatives and the leader in chip technology in Europe is the brexiting UK with the globally dominant ARM platform (soon to be acquired by NVIDIA from Softbank).
The only well-known company that might have made semiconductors was ASEA, which might have made some thyristors before disappearing 33 years ago, after the fusion with Brown Boveri.
Now ABB has the headquarters in Switzerland. It has various sites in Sweden, but so have some US companies, without any of them being considered as Swedish.
Even the Eastern Block countries, during the Soviet hegemony, produced more diverse semiconductor devices than ever done in Sweden.
The most technically advanced countries in semiconductors in Europe, before the global fashion of mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs that obliterated most traditional semiconductor companies starting around 1999, were (in no particular order):
Netherlands (Philips) Germany (Siemens) France (Thomson CSF) Italy (SGS-ATES) UK (Plessey and a few others)
Relics of the former European semiconductor companies can be found now mostly in Infineon, NXP and ST, but all these present companies are the results of long chains of mergers and acquisitions of various companies spread all over the world, so it is difficult to define them as belonging to Europe, US or to any other specific country or group of countries.
I was exaggerating a bit, as a counterbalance to the weird statement to which I was replying.
Nevertheless, while ABB is a great company, its importance as a semiconductor manufacturer is minimal. ABB sells electronic equipment, which is made with components made elsewhere, except for some high-power thyristors that are made by themselves.
Thyristors are the easiest to make among semiconductor devices that are still used. The only really difficult part to make are the high-quality silicon wafers from which they are made, but ABB does not make the wafers. Most likely they purchase the wafers from Japan, or maybe from Germany.
And outside of SH, it's even worse.
And at least for my normal rewe, it would make no sense to have those numbers, the average is below 1 person who’s in front of me at the counter.
These are major failures. Hopefully, as this was mostly due to constant sabotages by the UK, the situation will improve now that they are gone. Sadly, their constant push for enlargement can't really be undone and might still doom the union in the end.
Don't get me wrong, I like England. Great country, nice culture, shit partner. As far as I am concerned, Brexit is probably the best thing to ever happen to the EU.
Of course the UK will take a hit in the short term but failing to prepare for that is on them. It was their decision.
UK was in a lot of ways not a great fit for the EU sometimes but sometimes I do think it was good to have a larger player in the UK take a different position. I'm a big fan of the EU but they do seem to make mistakes, and completely ignore certain problems (like immigration).
Conservative politicians were the driving force behind the creation of the single market in the first place
> They lobbied heavily to be left out of the common agricultural policy
the UK is still part of the CAP
> were against Maastricht
which is why the UK signed it
> pushed heavily for enlargement ensuring they would be no political cohesion in the union
this is a common conspiracy theory, but it has no basis in fact
> Leon Brittan as a trade commissioner was a staunch opponent to any kind of state aid in the 90s and single handly significantly weakened the European industry.
yes, you make your industry stronger by protecting it from competition by providing it with taxpayer subsidy... right?
Sweden is ahead in some things related to tech, particularly their own version of startups. Spotify remember, is related to the fact that Sweden is a pop-music powerhouse - there is definitely industry synergy there.
They are generally well organized for a small country, they make Jet Fighters (quite a feat) which is also related to the fact they are a few degrees more 'sovereign' in that they are not part of NATO and have historical antagonisms with a much bigger power, Russia. They had one of the world's largest air forces back when individual fighters were only the price of a few cars.
Those synergies resonate with one another but I don't think it's in silicon.
Although, Ericsson had their manufacturing in Sweden before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson