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Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

I mostly agree, though to be honest several EU companies dug their own graves.

How long since you've heard about anything relevant on the market from "Big German electronics manufacturer" (wink)? And from "Big Dutch electronics manufacturer" (though this one seems to be still around in some areas)?

And if Huawei pays good salaries then other companies better get on with it, right? Competition is competition. Only management can give the direction, the focus and the urgency needed and the European companies were awful at it.

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"Competition is competition."

Not if you have a state-backed cultish operation leveraging hyper nationalism and breaking all of the rules.

You can't compete with an entity that has unlimited cash, a massive spy apparatus behind it, access to financing from state owned banks that work with the central bank, where state banks print money to finance your customers, and completely asymmetric trade rules working in it's favour.

"Don't worry, we can make that for 1/5th the cost that you do, thanks to our labour laws back home (!) and the fact our IP appeared magically on our desks. And you don't even need to pay that money now - pay it later - our friendly CCP bank back home will give you unlimited credit! I might disagree with what I am telling you and everything bout it, but I've been trained since youth to store those notions deep inside and to never really speak the truth".

> Not if you have a state-backed cultish operation leveraging hyper nationalism and breaking all of the rules.

OK, but enough about Apple.

Apple is owned or controlled by the US Government?

Apple has the JP Morgan handing out cheap loans backed by the Fed to it's customers?

Apple works in perfect sync with the US Government and execs 'disappear' when they don't?

What happened when Jack Ma dared to disagree with Xi?

ASML, a Dutch semiconductor company, is a titan in the fab business. TSMC might be the world leader is chip fabrication, but the kit that they use is Dutch-sourced.

ASML gets mentioned so often as counter example to EU's downfall in tech that all it does it prove the point.

One drop of water doesn't mean it's raining.

> One drop of water doesn't mean it's raining.

The German Mittelstand is famous for their "hidden champions" - in fact, 48% of small-ish "world market leaders" are German, while only 28 of the big "Top 500" are (per https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40796571).

The problems with our Mittelstand are a) modern IT technologies (the amount of Mittelstand companies operating on fax-ed POs or with extremely shoddy IT setups is... mind blowing) and b) finding new and competent staff, given that many young people move to cities because the rural areas are unliveable.

TBH, as a SW engineer who used to work in family owned Mittelstand companies, those places are the worst you can choose to work in and no wonder they can't find employees willing to work for them anymore. Good riddance!

We just got a new 7T MRI from “Big German Electronics Manufacturer”. The runner-up option was from Big Dutch manufacturer.

That's great, but the problem is Apple makes x1000 more money selling phones than Siemens and Philips do selling MRI machines.

It's much closer than you'd think.

Apple's 2020 revenue was ~$US 250B; Siemen's 2019 revenue was ~$US $100B.

That’s Siemens’ global revenue including things like battleships and wind turbine farms.

...and Apple's from music, apps, books, and PCs.

My point is that these companies, while not as massively dominant as Apple, are still very relevant in their own markets. It's just that everyone wants a phone, while fewer people are on the hunt for heavy equipment.

The part which I should have made more explicit is “Big American electric conglomerate” also sells MRI stuff, but my impression is that it’s not often one of the front runners, so it’s not as though European companies just can’t compete.....

GE makes 7T MRI too and it's the only one cleared for clinical use in the US as far as I know: https://www.medgadget.com/2020/11/fda-clears-most-powerful-c...

Philips has been actively retreating from the consumer market for years, focussing on the medical market.

Hue is still around

Hue is not a multi-billion industry though, there's no ridiculous growth or profit margins, and it's not (read: no longer) a unique product, with companies like ikea jumping on the same bandwagon.

Philips the company now only operates in the medical market, the lighting division is a spin-off that still uses the Philips brand:

> In 2018, the independent Philips Lighting N.V. was renamed Signify N.V. However, it continues to produce and market Philips-branded products such as Philips Hue color-changing LED light bulbs

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips

And they also do electric tooth brushes and air filters (or what the name is), both of which are possibly the best on market.

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