​The UK’s global tech exports are predicted to grow by 35% in the next five years to £31.45 billion, according to a new report by Tech Nation.

The latest findings revealed that the value of tech exports is to increase by an additional £8.15 billion by 2025, despite potential inhibitors such as the coronavirus pandemic or Brexit.

According to the organisation, the UK digital tech services sector currently exports a much greater value of goods than they import, which last year led to a trade surplus of 55%, aproximately 7% more than the average trade surplus among the top 57 countries globally.

Last year, the UK was found to be the fifth largest digital tech services exporter in the world, at £23.3 billion, after India, the US, China, and Germany.

Commenting upon the estimates, Tech Nation’s chief executive Gerard Grech said that the UK “is a natural home for many scaling tech businesses”.

“The UK is also third in the world for the number of UK tech unicorns, and number one in Europe. These factors give us a strong conviction that UK founders, government and industry leaders should all be gearing up to double tech exports by 2025, in the aftermath of both the pandemic and Brexit.

“By doubling exports, UK tech could contribute an additional £23bn to the economy per year by 2025 and move up the ranks to become a top global exporter of tech,” he added.

The results mark a steady growth over the last four years, which led to the UK digital tech trade surplus to increase from £8.7bn in 2015 to £12.8bn in 2019 – a growth of 68%. This impressive performance has meant that the industry’s trade surplus is now the third largest in the UK, following Financial Services and the Insurance sector, at £43.4 and £16.9 billion, respectively.

According to Tech Nation’s Global Opportunities Index, a ranking of the best countries in the world for digital tech trading opportunities, the UK takes the second place behind the US – largely the result of the UK’s impressive online retail and e-commerce sales, which are valued at £688.4 billion.

The report argues that UK tech companies should be looking to the US, Israel, Canada, Germany and The Netherlands as the most attractive post-Brexit export markets, while also considering Brazil and Singapore as the fastest rising global opportunities for UK businesses to trade with.

Digital minister Caroline Dinenage described the UK as “Europe’s tech capital”, adding that “these figures reinforce our industry’s reputation as a truly global player”.

“It’s great to see our digital exports booming which will help create more jobs and opportunities for people up and down the country,” she said. “We are investing heavily in the nation’s digital infrastructure as well as in people’s digital skills which puts British firms in an unparalleled position to seize new, global opportunities on the horizon.”

Global Opportunities Index – Top 10

​Welcome to the seventh issue of IT Pro 20/20, our digital magazine that brings all of the previous month’s most important tech issues into clear view.

The A-levels fiasco is by no means the first example of UK leadership woefully misunderstanding technology or viewing it as a panacea. Whether it’s arrogance over the development of a centralised coronavirus contact-tracing app, or senior ministers accidentally leaking Zoom IDs over Twitter, the public sector is not exactly inspiring confidence in its ability to create a tech-savvy society.

As ever with technology, it’s going to be down to the private sector to drive this change. The coronavirus has forced many companies to shrink or close entirely, leaving likely hundreds of thousands of people out of work – although unemployment is notoriously difficult to monitor.

Yet, what we’re also seeing is a surge in the number of schemes offering retraining or courses in highly-sought after skills. In fact, in this month’s issue we argue that the coronavirus pandemic is likely going to create a learning revolution. Whether it’s a surge in the use of coding websites or encouraging veterans into technology, the fractured job market could prove fertile ground for those retraining into STEM-based roles.

The next IT Pro 20/20 will be available on Wednesday 30 September – previous issues can be found here.

If you would like to receive each issue in your inbox as they release, you can subscribe to our mailing list here.​

Plans for an underwater data cable between LA and Hong Kong have been scrapped after the US government suggested that China could use it to steal data.

The project is run by the Pacific Light Data Company and includes tech firms like Google and Facebook. 

The issue is that the Hong Kong section would have been managed by China’s Dr Peng Group, a firm the US government believes has a relationship with the Chinese intelligence and security services.

The project was first announced in 2016. At that time, Google said the cable would “provide enough capacity for Hong Kong to have 80 million concurrent HD video conference calls with Los Angeles”. To use the cable, however, companies need permission from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Around 12,800 km (800 miles) of the cable has already been laid but, according to new plans submitted to the US communication authority, it now only links the US to the Philippines and Taiwan.

“We can confirm that the original application for the PLCN cable system has been withdrawn, and a revised application for the US-Taiwan and US-Philippines portions of the system has been submitted,” a spokeswoman for Google told the BBC. “We continue to work through established channels to obtain cable landing licenses for our undersea cables.”
 
FCC Commissioner Geoffery Stark said in a tweet that he “shared the concerns” of the US Department of Justice, adding that he would “continue to speak out” against China accessing data carried by the cables. 
 
Operation of the cable has been caught in the ongoing US-China trade war, which doesn’t seem to have an end in sight. 
 
A similar fibre-optic cable has been announced between the UK, US and Spain. The ‘Grace Hopper‘ cable will run from New York and split off to Bilbao in Spain and Cornwall in the UK.

Videoconferencing company Zoom reported strong second-quarter earnings with revenue up 355% year on year.

Shares in the firm rose as much as 25% in extended trading after beating analyst expectations for the three months ending 31 July. 

For the first quarter of 2020, just as the pandemic started to spread, Zoom reported revenue growth of 169%. New customer subscriptions brought in 81% of that growth, according to financial chief Kelly Stechleberg. 

In the following three months, however, Q2 revenue is more than double Q1 at £663.5 million, growing 355% compared to the same period in 2019. As such, the company has raised its full-year guidance.

Zoom is arguably one of the biggest beneficiaries of the global lockdown, capitalising on the sudden need to communicate remotely with work, friends and family. The firm averaged 148.4 million monthly active users in the second quarter, an increase of 4,700% year on year, according to CNBC.

At the same time, the firm was also hit by criticism regarding its security capabilities. A number of high-profile organisations, including the FBI, Google, and even the country of Taiwan, banned its use after multiple reports pointed to a lack of end-to-end encryption. There was also the rise of so-called Zoom bombing where third-parties could hack into meetings by accessing the ID number. 

The company has sought to fix these issues by recruiting security experts and tweaking its platform in various ways, but it looks to have avoided any real damage to its reputation. Zoom’s income neared $186 million, up from a mere $5.5 million a year ago. 

However, the company’s gross profit of 71% is still under the 80% range the firm operated at before free users adopted the service at the start of the pandemic. 

On a conference call with investors, Steckelberg said the company’s gross profits will remain in the same range as the fiscal second quarter for the rest of the fiscal year. She also added the company was experiencing slightly higher rates of customer cancellation than normal, but that these new rates had been factored into its forecast.