The French government takes digital technology seriously by providing support in the form of financial funds (400 million EUR) to innovative small and medium sized companies, and by investing the total sum of 1.4mld EUR into the digital technology sector. Companies that can benefit from these investments include for example those operating within cloud computing, digitalization of information, nano-electronics, e-health, network security, embedded software intelligent transport systems, digital cities and e-education.
France also highlights the importance of the digital sector in their program called “Digital France 2012”, which has already achieved most of its objectives such as national implementation of digital emission and the end of the analogue TV. More projects are anticipated in the subsequent program “Digital France 2020”, with objectives including cloud computing, improvement of the digital ecosystem, support for innovation, protection of personal data, and development and expansion of digital products.
The current situation defined by fast paced innovation, governmental support, and increasing demand from the customer’s side benefits both, companies producing digital products, and investors looking for opportunities.
The focus of digital media is expected in the future to be mainly at inter-device wireless streaming that allows communication between digital devices such as TV, notebooks, mobile phones, tables, stereo amplifiers, hard drives, game consoles, and set-top boxes. The growth of inter-device wireless streaming is due to both already accessible and widespread technology, and consumers demand to share and transfer digital content Other trends include TV program broadcasting online, tablets, cloud computing, machine to machine technologies, social media, mobile e-commerce and applications.