British tech: the good, the bad and the ugly

Brit Week
We've had a week of themed articles on TechRadar - all about British technology

Rule Britannia! Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum! While William and Kate's wedding packed the streets of London, we decided to celebrate something a bit more contemporary: Britain's love of tech.

As Patrick Goss puts it: "There's no mistaking the fact that the UK is in love with technology. We are a nation of early adopters, enthusiasts and technophiles. We love playing with the latest kit, snooping out the biggest bargains and, thankfully for TechRadar, reading about it."

We decided to have a Brit Week on Techradar because Britain has much to shout about. All those tablet PCs everyone's getting worked up about? Almost all of them are straight outta Cambridge, thanks to processor technology developed and licensed by ARM - check out our interview with those guys later today.

The shiny nuggets of consumer joy that makes Apple's tills ker-ching were designed by a chap from Chingford. The World Wide Web? Londoner Tim Berners-Lee. And when it comes to silly-goggled headache generators, nobody does 3D TV like Sky.

We're one of the world's most tech-savvy markets, as former iPlayer boss and current Microsoft UK consumer and online MD Ashley Highfield told us. "We are [Microsoft's] number two market and the understanding is that the British consumer is very tech savvy," he says.

We're not just tech savvy, though: we're design savvy too. That's why Microsoft has decided to get sexy - or at least, to show off some nice laptops and Xboxes.

"The UK loves technology and innovation so we will have to lead with devices like the Kinect and other things that push our innovation to the fore, rather the competing solely on price," Highfield says. "We're keen to play in the area of design aesthetics."

Encouraging creativity

Before we break out the Union Jacks again, the picture isn't entirely rosy: we've got the brains, it seems, but we're not always helping them achieve their full potential. Sir James Dyson is the poster boy for UK inventors, and he explained how the UK is falling behind in innovation.

In short, we don't make enough stuff. "Recent GDP figures show that 76% of our economy is based on the service industry. If we don't turn ideas into exportable goods, we will lose our competitive edge," Sir James told us.

Part of the problem is that we don't have enough people studying engineering. "In the UK, there are 37,000 engineering vacancies every year, but only 22,000 graduates... science and engineering will be our future. Holding these subjects in high esteem is a good way of creating interest among our young people who will come up with the ideas of the future."

Encouraging creativity was a key theme of our Brit Week interviews, with legendary games developer Peter Molyneux praising the innovation in Xbox Live Arcade games and describing the results of his own firm's Creative Week, where everyone was allowed the time and freedom to push their own ideas.

"All in all we saw 35 different projects which ranged from tech, ideas, prototypes to almost finished games and we all mutually impressed each other. I can safely say that personally I was blown away by everything I saw that day."

Coming up with good ideas is one thing. Getting investors to help turn them into real products is another. "The real problem nowadays for many British devs and studios is the fact that they are struggling more than ever to get the investment they need in order to produce big games," Molyneux says.

He's quick to point out that it's not a UK-only problem, but it's still a problem: there's a yawning chasm between indie game developers and big-budget, triple-A developers.

Sir James Dyson argues that there's a similar lack of vision in engineering. "Ideas need to be developed to be turned int commercial successes," he says. "And we have to start now."

TOPICS

The TechRadar hive mind. The Megazord. The Voltron. When our powers combine, we become 'TECHRADAR STAFF'. You'll usually see this author name when the entire team has collaborated on a project or an article, whether that's a run-down ranking of our favorite Marvel films, or a round-up of all the coolest things we've collectively seen at annual tech shows like CES and MWC. We are one.

Latest in Tech
A Lego Pikachu tail next to a Pebble OS watch and a screenshot of Assassin's Creed Shadow
ICYMI: the week's 7 biggest tech stories from LG's excellent new OLED TV to our Assassin's Creed Shadow review
A triptych image of the Meridian Ellipse, LG C5 and Xiaomi 15.
5 amazing tech reviews of the week: LG's latest OLED TV is the best you can buy and Xiaomi's seriously powerful new phone
Beats Studio Pro Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones in Black and Gold on yellow background with big savings text
The best Beats headphones you can buy drop to $169.99 at Best Buy's Tech Fest sale
Ray-Ban smart glasses with the Cpperni logo, an LED array, and a MacBook Air with M4 next to ecah other.
ICYMI: the week's 7 biggest tech stories from Twitter's massive outage to iRobot's impressive new Roombas
A triptych image featuring the Sennheiser HD 505, Apple iPad Air 11-inch (2025), and Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M4).
5 unmissable tech reviews of the week: why the MacBook Air (M4) should be your next laptop and the best sounding OLED TV ever
Apple iPhone 16e
Which affordable phone wins the mid-range race: the iPhone 16e, Nothing 3a, or Samsung Galaxy A56? Our latest podcast tells all
Latest in News
DeepSeek
Deepseek’s new AI is smarter, faster, cheaper, and a real rival to OpenAI's models
Open AI
OpenAI unveiled image generation for 4o – here's everything you need to know about the ChatGPT upgrade
Apple WWDC 2025 announced
Apple just announced WWDC 2025 starts on June 9, and we'll all be watching the opening event
Hornet swings their weapon in mid air
Hollow Knight: Silksong gets new Steam metadata changes, convincing everyone and their mother that the game is finally releasing this year
OpenAI logo
OpenAI just launched a free ChatGPT bible that will help you master the AI chatbot and Sora
An aerial view of an Instavolt Superhub for charging electric vehicles
Forget gas stations – EV charging Superhubs are using solar power to solve the most annoying thing about electric motoring