It looks like the Dutch parliament is putting its arms around a Dutch Small Business Act now, a discussion I ignited with my June 21 press conference and the subsequent reaction from the Dutch Minister of International Trade. Today I received an email from Dutch member of parliament (MP) Mr. Jan ten Hoopen (CDA) that he now submitted a formal request to the Dutch government through a "motion". In his motion (click here to download as a PDF in Dutch) he requests "to develop a facility similar to the Small Business Act in the United States" "…with a government target of 23% of all procurement of products and technologies…" requesting a response before January 1, 2006. Taking into account the support earlier expressed by the political parties PvdA and VVD, this is likely to become a serious debate in Dutch parliament.
Yahoo seems to make the first move in the mobile race with Google I blogged about earlier. Today news leaked (?) out through the Wall Street Journal that a Yahoo branded mobile phone is underway to the market, apparently for the US only initially: "SBC executives said the SBC-Yahoo phone, which will be manufactured by Nokia Corp., is expected to be available as soon as early next year and will cost $200 to $300. Operating on the Cingular Wireless network, which is co-owned by SBC and BellSouth Corp., the phone will also be an MP3 player, a 1.3 megapixel camera and will have a removable memory card." So let’s see now how long it takes for Google to announce a counter attack. If they want to outperform Yahoo, their phone should be manufactured in Taiwan by HTC based on Google’s specifications, support WiFi (enabling surfing on the San Francisco city network Google is bidding for), have a QWERTY keyboard like the Treo 650, cost less than $200 and become available in Europe simultaneously… Looking at Yahoo’s product announcements lately (widgets, RSS etc.) it almost looks as if they spot Google’s next move and then ensure they come with a product announcement earlier. I can imagine Yahoo nor Google wants to be portrayed as a follower in the current combat.
Update: goes without saying that both phones would sport new mobile advertising functions of course! Like a SIM-lock for Google AdSense ;-)
The Dutch Minister of Foreign Trade Mrs. Karien van Gennip sent a letter this week to Dutch Parliament, answering MP-questions resulting from my June 21 press conference.
In summary her letter covers three topics (to download the Dutch letter as Word document, click here):
1. The Minister agrees that European SMEs cannot compete on equal footing with American SMEs due to a WTO-GPA agreement in place since 10 years.
2. To reverse the preferred treatment American SMEs are getting under the WTO agreement, the topic has now been put on the agenda of the current WTO-negotiations by the EU, supported by the Dutch government.
3. The Netherlands has started a trial with a SBA-pact for SMEs, a so-called SBIR arrangement which awards government R&D projects to SMEs.
The good news is that the Dutch government explicitly recognizes the unfairness of the issue and now actively supports the lobby to renegotiate the WTO-GPA agreement. I am glad my lobby effort and press conference in June on behalf of SUN&SUP had some impact. What I am less satisfied about is that the Dutch government feels it’s already doing something to support SMEs with government projects. The fact of the matter is that these SBIR-projects she refers to, total only a few million Euros, which is nothing compared to the 23% of public procurement the US government awards to American SMEs annually. Government procurement in the Netherlands totals 30 billion Euro (…) annually. Imagine only 10% of that, 3 billion Euro, flowing to Dutch SMEs every year. Wouldn’t that be a true impulse for employment growth and innovation among SMEs, the European Union is so desperately pursuing with it’s Lisbon agenda? I’ll try to get this point across.