The market may be dominated by a few countries but screensavers can come from anywhere there are inventive people, which is everywhere.

Mathematics is the language of science and so it is for computer science. Math wiz kids from various countries playing around, having fun writing instruction sets for computer visual effect displays, I think started the ground works for today’s screensaver industry. I remember a young Italian kid on the internet in the early 1990s publishing nifty little screensaver programs that were quite innovative. He was a math prodigy who visually demonstrated interesting algorithms as screensavers.

The first commercial screensavers were developed in the US and they dominated the newly created industry into the new millennium, then their European counterparts seem to forge ahead in areas of creativity and innovation. I believe currently the Netherlands and Germany are the hotbed of screensaver development, with the rising Russian companies right behind.

The UK, France, Italy, Spain and the Scandinavian countries have creative developers but remain relatively unknown to the US market. From the Middle East, Egypt is the only country I am aware of that has screensaver developers. South Africa I believe has a few also.

It is very surprising that Asian companies are not among the leaders of this industry since they seem to have a knack for creative technology. There are a few developers from China, Singapore and Taiwan but none from India and Japan that I am aware of. Brazil is another tech savvy country that is absent from this field.

Generally speaking commercially developed screensavers originate from Europe, Russia, US and English speaking counties like Canada, Australia and New Zealand. However like artists, individuals who develop for the sheer enjoyment of being creative are global and not confined to any particular country or region. In many cases they, without being constrained or bound to market driven goals are able to produce the most creative and refreshing screensavers.