Mobile startups flourish in Stockholm suburb

If your mobile phone starts morphing into an interactive subway schedule, the menu of a nearby restaurant or a medical diagnostic instrument, a suburb of Stockholm that’s home to a cluster of innovative tech companies may be responsible.

Kista has emerged as a major European center for innovation in information and telecommunications technologies (ICT), with more than 400 high-tech companies located on the gently rolling wooded site between the E4 motorway and an elevated subway line.

It’s educational facilities include Mobila Gymnasiet, a high school where incoming students get a laptop and an Internet account instead of a pile of books. It’s also home to the Electrum Foundation, a research center started by Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson and ABB in 1988.

Ericsson has been a big magnet for the wireless industry, having relocated its Stockholm headquarters to Kista in recent years. And IBM Corp. has had a big regional operation in Kista for more than two decades. The rapid growth of the suburb, whose commercial area is called Kista Science City, has also been fed by government, higher education, research and private initiatives.

Reflecting the ICT boom, the local mall under the elevated train stop has grown in the past few years from a typical Swedish suburban mall, with a Konsum supermarket and Systembolaget state liquor store, to a facility that houses 125 shops, 33 restaurants and an 11-screen multiplex cinema.

The mall is used as a demo area for mobile services being developed locally, including public transport information services, and time- and location-based shopping and dining tips. The demonstrations are organized by the nonprofit Kista Mobile and Broadband Showcase. Tomas Bennich, who runs the showcase, said he expected 20 or so companies to join when he started it a year ago. But more than 50 have joined, and the number will rise as the group expands its mission to include broadband services.

Some 65,000 people work in Kista, and a multitude of languages can be heard in the enclosed “boulevard” running the length of the Galleria, including American English, German, French, Farsi — and quite a lot of Swedish

Xavier Aubry, the French cofounder of Appear Networks, says he picked Kista for a headquarters because it’s “a knowledge hub, with skilled engineers in the field of telecom and data computing, and because it’s less expensive than London or Paris.”

His company develops context-driven software for delivering information to employees based on their location and job duties. Its clients include the Netherlands Railways, where 10,000 employees at 50 stations receive information over a WLAN infrastructure is provided by Cisco Systems Inc.

The tax situation in Sweden is a mixed bag, he said. While corporate taxes are reasonable, personal taxes are higher than in most other European countries. But that hasn’t stopped entrepreneurs and freelance consultants from piling in. Swedish labor laws make it advantageous to pay such consultants rather than add staff for short and medium term projects, he noted.

Kiwok, another local company, makes a wireless medical application called BodyKom. It uses heart rhythm sensors attached to the chest and to a Bluetooth transmitter at the other end, which relays the data to a handheld computer or mobile phone with GPS software. Software on the handheld evaluates the heart function in real time and alerts a hospital server if thresholds are exceeded, Kiwok Chief Information Officer Agneta Wistrand explained.

Kiwok started work on the service after one of its founders, who has a heart ailment, was prescribed the wrong medicine for several months — something he thinks could have been avoided by closer monitoring of his heart. The company is also developing always-on blood pressure and diabetes monitoring, said CEO Björn Söderberg.

Kista may soon find more medical-related companies in its midst. Kiwok has started a technology subcluster in Kista, the Kista MedKom Zone, where companies can demonstrate wireless e-medicine applications.