From Access to Tech to Education and Careers: The 48 World’s Tech Hubs Revealed

Over the past year, it’s become clear how powerful electronic technology can be – from helping us stay connected across distances, to disseminating crucial news and data in real-time. With the entire world relying on tech devices, particularly recently, the tech race has never been this competitive. Electronics retailer Carphone Warehouse created the World’s Tech Hotspots index to find out which cities around the world are on the winning stretch. The findings are below.

These are the world’s top 10 tech hotspots

It’s probably no surprise that the leader in the World’s Tech Hotspots is San Francisco, home of Silicon Valley. The top 10 cities are detailed below:

San Francisco (overall score of 126.74 out of 170): San Fran scores well for factors such as its welcoming start-up environment, a high score for Ease of Doing Business score (84/100), excellent average tech salaries (£89k for software engineers) and great education scores (its top university gets 92.4/100 in the QS Top University Rankings for STEM).

New York (125.90): Some of New York’s highest scores include those for Ease of Doing Business (85.2/100), brilliant access to online governance (top marks of 1 on a 0-1 scale), high smartphone penetration (79.1%), and great scores for its start-up culture.

London (118.08): London scores well across several metrics, including the joint-highest smartphone penetration percentage of all cities assessed (82.9%, alongside Manchester), great start-up scores, and top scores for education.

Boston (117.27): Boston’s MIT takes the city’s education score to the top of the ranks, while other strong factors include high average pay for tech jobs (£69,000 per year), great access to online governance and low web censorship.

Stockholm (117.05): Stockholm’s high scores include great smartphone and internet penetration in the population, decent tech freedom scores, and top scores for cutting edge global tech skills.

Singapore (116.58): Singapore has the highest broadband speeds and best Ease of Doing Business scores compared to all cities assessed, as well as great scores for social media access and social progress in tech.

Copenhagen (115.42): Copenhagen’s top score is for percentage of internet users, although it also scores highly for smartphone and social media access, and affordability of tech.

Los Angeles (114.43): For Los Angeles, its top scores are in access to online governance. It also scores well for metrics such as smartphone penetration, start-up environment and lack of web censorship.

Sydney (113.32): Sydney scores top marks for the number of tech centres in the city, and also does well for social progress in tech, online governance and tech affordability.

Seattle (112.88): Seattle does best for its access to online governance, while also performing strongly for smartphone penetration, STEM education and average pay for tech jobs.

Why Copenhagen and Singapore perform best for tech access

The Access to Tech metrics look at factors such as smartphone penetration, availability of high-speed internet, social media access and affordability of mobile internet. Copenhagen scores highest in the category, with the top 5 cities as follows:

Copenhagen (45.32 out of 50), with its top score for percentage of internet users (97.32%).

Singapore (43.76), with 10 out of 10 for its super high-speed internet (247.54Mbps).

Stockholm (41.25), scoring highest for smartphone penetration at 78.8%.

Barcelona (40.26), scoring well for smartphone penetration (74.3%) and percentage of internet users (86.1%).

Paris (39.15), with highest scores for smartphone penetration (77.5%).