The pioneer technopole was Sophia Antipolis of Nice, who was followed by many others. All of them have a close relationship with the business world and with the world of education.

In 2016, the information and communication technology market in France was worth 113 billion euros. There are different categories to group in this sector:

Some key figures of the ICT sector in France:

-8 % : This is the part of the value added by the creation of custom software compared to the total for the sector. This corresponds to EUR 6 billion.

-3.86% : This is the weight of ICT in France’s GDP in 2014. A higher ratio than that observed in Spain or Italy, but lower than that of Germany (4.19%).

-25%: Digital technology now accounts for 25% of French growth, compared to 20% for the period 2005-2009.

-131,835 : This is the number of companies operating in the ICT sector in France. Of this total, there are only 1,650 industrial software development companies and 6,579, the vast majority of which are service companies.

Despite the fact that companies in this sector are usually SMEs or micro-enterprises (a lot of start-ups), in France we find companies that are larger in size than Spanish ones.

The ICT sector in France is more mature, but not as much as the German sector. Its business fabric is older and more consolidated than the French ICT market.