Lule�'s commerce and industry is a mix of industry, research, education, trade, and services. The university's educational programmes have attracted new businesses as well as local offices for multinational corporations.
Major employers in the city are the SSAB steelworks and Lule� University of Technology. A Swedish Air Force wing, F 21 (or Norrbotten Air Force Wing), are stationed near Lule� at the neighbouring Lule� Airport. Other major employers include Ferruform (a subsidiary of Scania AB) and Gestamp HardTech (acquired from SSAB 2005-01-01).
IT industry
The information technology industry in Lule� has about 2000 employees (2008).
Lule� is the home of several major innovations and technological milestones.
� The First GSM Call (1989)
� The VDSL standard (2000�2007)
� Broadcast Radio � RDS, DAB, DARC (1992�1997)
� The Lule� algorithm for routing (1997)
� Living Labs � leading European service testbed with 6000 users (2001-)
� HDTV transport layer for telephony cabling (1996)
� Software GPS in mobile phones (2005-)
� OFDM � the basis for 4G (1990�2006)
� Marratech - pioneers in Internet-based E-meetings (1998-) - acquired by Google, releasing in November 2008 video-chat support in Gmail
� Arena project, IT in Sports � sensors, handheld wireless video (1999�2002)
� Estreet project - First large-scale mobile marketing experiment (2000)
� On 27 October 2011 Facebook announced it will locate its first data center outside of the United States in Lule�. The whole facility, a set of three 300,000 square foot buildings is scheduled to be operational by 2014. The first building will be operational 2012. The establishment will help turn
