Europe

We often hear people say that GPS is ubiquitous, but it is hard to comprehend how without first understanding how GPS technology has evolved and the innovation that is driving applications to make use of GPS derived data.

The advent of multi-constellation has been and will continue to be a significant driver in the uptake of GNSS (Europe’s Galileo constellation has finally arrived, starting to offer Early Operational Capability in December 2016). However, the main reasons behind the commoditization of GNSS include several technological evolutions.

On February 17, Bill Gates set the news agenda around the world by declaring that a so-called "robot tax" should be introduced in order to counteract job losses caused by automation. "Right now," he told online publication Quartz, "the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory has that income taxed. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level."

There is no doubting that Gates' vision of job displacement is not of a distant dystopian future, but today's reality: in 2015 expenditure on robotics climbed to $46 billion, globally. A hotel in Japan, Nagasaki, is staffed entirely by robots. Even heritage British cake brand Mr Kipling has enlisted the help of 46 robots to pack its cakes.

European businesses are among the world's most active when it comes to finding innovation through start-ups. This is according to Samsung's new report, The Open Economy. According to it, businesses are changing the way they’re innovating, and are focusing on bringing in and collaborating with young and inspiring start-ups.

Out of the five countries with the highest number of large companies engaged with start-ups, four are in Europe, the report states. Almost all European corporations surveyed (97 percent) have carefully analyzed the need for open innovation. Not all have acted on their findings just yet.

Last year Apple was hit with $14 billion tax bill after the European Commission decided the company had enjoyed "illegal tax benefits" in Ireland. Apple said that it would appeal against the ruling which Tim Cook described as "maddening", but Europe is showing increased interest in cracking down on technology companies taking advantage of tax loopholes.

The appeal has now been placed, and Apple is asking the appeal court to either partly overturn the Commission's ruling and pay its legal fees, or completely overturn the ruling. The fact that Apple is setting forth two possible outcomes would indicate that it feels a full annulment of the original ruling is unlikely, but it has submitted a 14-point appeal.

The way people do business will drastically change in the next three to five years, and Europeans are leading the way. This is according to a new report by Samsung, which investigates key trends impacting the workplace culture.

This new business model we’re all about to embrace Samsung dubs the Open Economy. Basically, it revolves around high levels of collaboration between companies, contractors and partners, while retaining industry-standard security levels. The report calls upon WIPO’s Global Innovation Index, which claims European countries occupy eight out of the top ten slots.

Privacy fears abound with Windows 10, with individuals and privacy groups continually questioning the company's motives in gathering user data. The threat of a court case in Switzerland resulted in Microsoft making changes to Windows -- in addition to the privacy changes it had already made.

But for European privacy watchdogs, the latest batch of changes are still not enough. The Article 29 Working Party voices concern about the settings that are in place by default, the lack of control users are given over data collection, and a general lack of transparency.

Whoever gets to enforce GDPR on businesses is going to have their hands full starting May next year. According to DMA, 26 percent of marketers believe their businesses are unprepared for the General Data Protection regulation, and just two thirds (68 percent) believe they will be compliant in time for the deadline, which is May 2018.

In the second edition of DMA’s "GDPR and you" series, it says that two thirds of marketers (66 percent) have "good" awareness, up from 53 percent in June last year.

More than half of companies in the UK, US and Germany (53 percent) are not prepared to face a cyber-attack. This is according to a new report by specialist insurer Hiscox, which has polled more than 3,000 companies for the report.

The Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2017 looks at four areas -- strategy, resourcing, technology and process -- and ranks companies based on such criteria. Most companies score fairly well for technology, but less than a third (30 percent) reach the "expert" score in their overall cyber-readiness.

Valve, the company behind games distribution platform Steam, is being investigated by EU antitrust regulators. Agreements in place between Valve and five game publishers that implement geo-blocking in titles could breach European competition rules.

Valve, alongside Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax, is under investigation to determine whether the practice of restricting access to games and prices based on location is legal. At the same time the European Commission is launching an investigation into ASUS, Denon & Marantz, Philips and Pioneer for price manipulation.

Plans to scrap mobile roaming charges in the EU have been a long time coming, but today the European Commission reveals the charges will finally come to an end on June 15 2017. EU negotiators have finally agreed on wholesale prices, something which is being described as the "last piece of the puzzle".

The cost of voice calls and text messages will be capped from this date, but there is a tapered reduction period for data charges. It is a step towards the creation of a Digital Single Market and the introduction of a "roam-like-at-home" will be welcomed by Europeans, although it's not yet clear if the arrangement will remain in place in the UK post-Brexit.

On January 1, 2017, workers in France were given the "right to disconnect". Article 55 of the El Khomri Act is a key measure of the country’s revised Labor code that obliges companies with over 50 workers to begin negotiations with employees and guarantee them the right to ignore their smartphones outside of working hours.

It’s no secret that the rise of the smartphone has created an always-on culture, but while that has led to leaps in productivity it has also seen workers around the world burn out more quickly, compromise their work-life balance and become more stressed. Cabinet Eleas found that 12 percent of France’s working population suffers from a "burn out syndrome," with 37 percent admitting they use their devices outside of working hours each day.

Consumers in US and Europe haven't quite warmed up to wearables, according to a new report from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Smartwatch adoption in both markets remains below the five percent mark, despite multiple models being available for a few years now.

This isn't exactly a surprising finding, because smartwatch sales are pretty bad. Depending on who you choose to believe, they were between 2.7 and 6.1 million units in the third quarter of last year (we're still waiting on the numbers for 2016 from the likes of IDC and Canalys). Apple Watch rules this space, but it is hardly a major market as you can see.

Despite the fact that the media has dulled its teeth and worn out its keyboards, talking and reporting about the General Data Protection regulation (GDPR), less than half (47 percent) of businesses in the UK are aware of it. What’s more, just four in ten (40 percent) are fully aware of the NIS Directive.

Both documents will be coming into effect in 2018, and will significantly change how we do business online.

Ransomware was the number one way hackers attacked businesses in 2016, a new report by Radware confirms. Entitled Global Application and Network Security Report 2016-2017, it says 49 percent of European businesses confirmed cyber-ransom as the biggest motivator last year.

That basically represents a 100 percent increase compared to a year before, when it stood at 25 percent.

The European Union is not happy with the explanation Yahoo has given for scanning user emails for US intelligence. There is concern about how such surveillance could impact upon not only privacy, but also business between the EU and US, and trust has to be built from scratch as Donald Trump becomes president.

Yahoo -- which is on the verge of being sold to Verizon -- is not signed up to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement that blocks the US from spying on European data. As such, the company has been acting on a previously-secret court order, gathering data for the NSA and FBI. Speaking with Reuters, the EU Justice Commissioner said she wants more information about what was gathered and why.