Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic From broadband internet and mobile phones to cash-free societies, digital government and cloud computing, Nordic countries\u2019 early adoption of innovations has often given their companies a head start.\u00a0The quick response that helped Nokia, Skype, Spotify and Klarna dominate their industries is now benefiting Nordic companies in emerging fields such as electric vehicle (EV) charging and cloud software.\u201cOnce you are an early starter in this industry\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009you have an advantage,\u201d says Benny Guttman, senior partner at the consultancy Roland Berger, of the EV charging market.Norway has been the global leader in the transition to EVs since 2013, when the Tesla Model S was the best-selling car, surpassing petrol rivals. Last year, 89 per cent of new car sales in Norway were pure electric, while in Denmark the figure was 52 per cent. In Sweden, 32 per cent of sales were electric, and 58 per cent with plug-in hybrids, while in Finland the figures were 29 per cent and 69 per cent.Kempower, a Finnish charging hardware company which is eighth in the FT1000 ranking of Europe\u2019s Fastest Growing Companies, and Virta (ranked 283rd), a Finnish company which focuses on charging software and payment solutions, have both benefited from the early rollout of EV charging networks in the region.\u201cNordic countries have been [among] the most advanced players in incentivising this transition and this has brought the technologies forward, and then the market,\u201d says Jussi Palola, chief innovation officer and co-founder at Virta.He also credits the Finnish government for launching a \u20ac110mn project to fund research on EV charging systems in 2011, which led to the creation of Virta and Kempower. \u201cThe logic from the Finnish perspective was that this transition is essential, it is going to happen, and we want to lead the technologies in this area,\u201d Palola says.Company purchases of electric vehicles for employees, encouraged by tax incentives, helped spur the development of the market in Sweden, with the EV share of company purchases growing from 16 per cent in 2018 to 74 per cent in 2023.The high-profile collapse of Swedish battery maker Northvolt sent shockwaves through the renewables sector. But Guttman dismisses fears of a backlash after recent US policy shifts.Nordic companies have shown a similar openness to innovation when adopting software solutions to make processes such as hiring, accounting, marketing and sales more efficient.This openness comes down to the level of trust, transparency and positive experience with digitisation in each of the Nordic countries\u201cThe level of digitisation and the openness towards digitisation is just next level,\u201d says Milos L\u00f8rup Bartosek, an Oslo-based director at the consultancy Strategy&, part of PwC. \u201cThis openness comes down to the level of trust, transparency and positive experience with digitisation in each of the Nordic countries, which is much higher than we observe\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009in the UK and Germany.\u201dThis openness has helped power the rapid growth of companies such as Sweden\u2019s Teamtailor and Funnel, Norway\u2019s Omnium, and Finland\u2019s Epassi, which help companies with recruitment, sales, order management and employee benefits respectively. Of the 42 Nordic companies in the ranking, 12 offer some kind of cloud-based subscription software service to other businesses.\u201cThey\u2019re not necessarily the next Microsoft, but they find very strong niches in which you can build businesses with revenues in the hundreds of millions of euros\u201d, Bartosek says of the business-to-business software-as-a-service or \u201cB2B SaaS\u201d sector.The key, as outlined in a Strategy& Nordic sector report, has been providing \u201can incredibly strong value proposition\u201d to customers, especially in the small and medium sized business segment. This helps them to carry out key functions better with fewer staff, so that savings and improved performance more than cover the cost of subscription.Trust also fosters co-operation between Nordic companies. Virta has made KemPower a preferred hardware partner and the SaaS companies offer integrations with dozens of other similar businesses, both Nordic and international.\u201cNordic companies tend to collaborate,\u201d Guttman says, noting that \u201cthere are clear benefits to being Nordic in another Nordic country\u201d.As well as a receptive regional customer base, the region also has hubs and incubators for start-ups, seed capital from government agencies and angel investors, and growth capital from investors such as Sweden\u2019s Creandum, Norway\u2019s Verdane, and Denmark\u2019s ByFounders.Most of these companies have continued to grow despite a slowdown in Nordic economies in recent years. GDP in Finland and Sweden shrank by 1.2 and 0.3 per cent respectively in 2023, while that of Norway, excluding oil and gas, grew by 0.5 per cent. While there were signs of recovery in 2024, growth remains weak, with Sweden\u2019s and mainland Norway\u2019s economies growing by 1 per cent and 0.6 per cent respectively, while Finland\u2019s shrank by 0.5 per cent.\u00a0Denmark\u2019s economy has been the exception, with GDP growth of 2.5 per cent in 2023 and 3.2 per cent in 2024, thanks partly to the success of Novo Nordisk\u2019s obesity drug Wegovy.The B2B SaaS companies have been resilient primarily because most offer ways for their customers to cut costs. The shift to EVs, meanwhile, is continuing, despite the economic slowdown and the removal of subsidies.\u201cOf course, the global economic turmoil has slowed down some markets,\u201d says Palola. But he predicts revenue growth this year, with Europe\u2019s EV fleet to increase by 20 to 25 per cent.A bigger threat is competition. Advanced AI companies now threaten B2B SaaS by fully automating tasks such businesses had only helped clients to do more efficiently.\u201cThe big question for every B2B SaaS company is how it will be able to integrate itself into the AI ecosystem, and how to develop its own agents using AI,\u201d Bartosek says.Vehicle-charging companies, meanwhile, face competition from lower cost Chinese rivals and larger European and US companies.\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a little bit tougher going forward for these companies, especially those that don\u2019t have positive cash flows,\u201d Guttman says. \u201cSome will go out of business, some will be bought up, and some will thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic From broadband internet and mobile phones to cash-free societies, digital government and cloud computing, Nordic countries\u2019 early adoption of innovations has often given their companies a head start.\u00a0The quick response that helped Nokia, Skype, Spotify and Klarna dominate their industries is now benefiting Nordic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-254470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}