Small, round, plastic monsters - catnip to children aged 5 and upwards - could be the face of Britain's next big tech success.
Moshi Monsters, an online social networking and swapping game created by the British start-up Mind Candy, is the latest poster child for tech companies. With its 60 million users worldwide, it has had phenomenal growth and attracts comparisons with Facebook.
Britain's tech companies want to run alongside the big boys of Silicon Valley and many of them already do.
Take any smartphone or tablet computer and the chances are the technology behind its graphics was developed not in California but in Kings Langley, a village on the edge of the Chiltern hills in, 34km out of central London.
Imagination Technologies, based in Kings Langley, designs the computer-chip technologies behind the graphics for iPads and iPhones. Last month, it announced pre-tax profits were up 53 per cent to almost £37 million (Dh210.4m), partly due to the success of the Apple products.
Another Apple supplier, Arm Holdings, is now considered Britain's national champion in the tech sector. Based in the university town Cambridge in East Anglia, the company is one of the United Kingdom's 100 leading businesses and dominates the mobile phone chip market with annual revenues of £491.8m.
Meanwhile, Autonomy, an FTSE 100 technology company was sold last year to Hewlett-Packard, which was desperate for an innovative software business to revive its flagging fortunes in the computer and printer hardware sector. The US company paid US$10.2 billion (Dh37.46bn).
Wolfson Microelectronics, based in Edinburgh in Scotland, is another internationally recognised supplier that has been benefiting from the stellar success of certain smartphones. Wolfson sells world-class audio for consumer electronics and supplies Samsung's Galaxy models and its tablets.
So the UK has recognisable successes on which to build. Its internet economy was worth £121bn in 2010, or 8.3 per cent of GDP, according to data from Boston Consulting.
That figure is set to rise to £225bn, or 12.4 per cent of GDP, by 2016. If the UK's internet economy was regarded as a traditional sector it would be bigger than the construction or education sectors.
Not surprising, then, that politicians have seized on this area as one ripe for judicious backing. According to David Cameron, the British prime minister and the leader of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, East London has the potential to become Europe's tech hub.
It is already home to some 774 digital and tech businesses and the British government is trying to lure entrepreneurs, start-ups and venture capital investors to the grimy secondary location on the fringes of the City and known as "Silicon Roundabout".
Index Ventures is a venture capital fund that has been hanging around Silicon Roundabout for the past 10 years. It has a proven track record in spotting technology winners and is an investor in Mind Candy.
Index was an early investor in Last.fm, sold to the US entertainment giant CBS for $280m in 2007, and Betfair, a gaming website that was another of its early British successes. It also spotted the potential of Facebook years ago.
Last month, Index launched a €350m (Dh1.55bn) fund to invest in early start-up tech companies.
Ben Holmes, one of its partners, says entrepreneurs have come from all over Europe in the past 10 years to base themselves in London. "Entrepreneurs get a lot of value from being in a hub. They can share knowledge quickly and easily," he says.
Index has about 20 companies ready to float in the next year, he adds. Together, they will be worth close to €1.5bn in value and have created 5,000 jobs during the past 10 years. Of those companies, five or six are of a substantial size and in any other decade would have been floated already. But Mr Holmes cautions that finding something of the scale of Facebook in the UK is nigh on impossible.
Index's partners are also concerned about the lacklustre initial public offering market in London and think more should be done to create a viable IPO market so successful British companies do not end up listing in New York.
Other sceptical voices in the tech community believe the UK's culture and tax laws make it hard for entrepreneurs to succeed there.
Mark Lancaster, the co-founder of SDL, a Web content management company, believes British companies have had success in the technology sector in spite of the business climate, rather than because of it.
The entrepreneur, who runs what is probably Britain's third-biggest tech company, says it is almost impossible for a start-up tech company to get a bank loan and there is a concerning tendency to attack anyone who is highly rewarded these days, regardless of what they have created or risked to get to that position.
More worryingly, he does not see a deep pool of tech talent in the UK. "Of the 2,700 people SDL employs most of them are not in the UK because there just isn't the skill set," he says. Most of SDL's employees are based in the US, the Netherlands and in Romania.
On whether East London can become a tech hub for Europe, he points out a lot more than a short-term push from the British government is needed. "If you have a really great idea, it's not going to happen in five years.
"Let's assume that some of these [start-ups] will be successful but it will take 20 years before they get to the stage where there is any depth of talent and skill and spin-off companies develop," he says.
Another company, which last week turned the tables and acquired a US competitor, disagrees.
Aim-listed Monitise, which supplies mobile banking services around the world, bought Clairmail last month in a £90m deal.
Lee Cameron, the Monitise's chief commercial officer, says there is a wealth of tech talent in the UK.
"We have no difficulty attracting highly-skilled graduates, innovative developers and seasoned industry players. Last year, we opened a high-tech centre near Cardiff where we develop, test and build new Mobile Money applications. It now has 100 staff," he says.
The company is also pleased with the emphasis the government has placed on collaboration with the private sector and Monitise has accompanied Mr Cameron and other ministers on trade missions in Africa and Asia.
Monitise's Mr Cameron says it is an exciting time to be involved in the UK mobile technology sector.
In March, Google opened its Campus in Shoreditch - which provides accommodation for fledgling companies. Google's move put major corporate backing behind the British tech sector and East London in particular. Intel and Cisco have also been involved in supporting the work of the government-funded Tech City Investment Organisation.
"To prosper, tech hubs must have a self-supporting community of successful entrepreneurs and investors, access to finance and access to top talent. Britain has much to be proud of," says Monitise's chief commercial officer.
