China to Learn from India in Software DevelopmentChina hopes to learn from the success of India's software sector by giving priority to research and development in the tenth five-year plan, Minister of Science and Technology Zhu Lilan said in Beijing on Wednesday, December 27."We are optimistic about the future of our software industry," Ms Zhu said while commenting on China's potential as a software giant in the new millennium, on par with countries like India and Ireland. Ms Zhu said the government would invest heavily in improving China's high-technology sectors. Ms Zhu said both India and Ireland have concentrated on overseas markets while China had focussed on its domestic market. She noted that India's software developers mainly targeted the US market and their Irish counterparts exported software in 20 languages to the European countries. Ms Zhu said that compared to India's, China's software industry was quite different. India's domestic software market was not as developed as its exports front. China's domestic market was huge and developing fast. But China's exports were minimal. She said things would hopefully change soon on the export front with the Chinese Government offering major tax incentives to software developing firms. The number of Chinese homes with computers grew rapidly this year and is expected to double next year, China Daily reported. This prediction is based on a survey of 58 million citizens in 22 major Chinese cities although the actual sample size was only 10,000. A marketing research company that is a subsidiary of the Chinese government's national bureau of statistics, found that computers are becoming commonplace. About one-third of households have desktop computers, the market research firm said. Around 9.1 per cent of the homes surveyed bought desktop computers this year. More than 1.67 million desktops were sold, a 49.5 per cent rise on last year, the paper said. Sales of laptop computers were overshadowed by the outstanding performance of the desktop sector. Only 0.9 per cent of the homes surveyed had laptops - just 143,000 of them, 35.7 per cent up on last year. Demand next year is expected to be high, with 14.7 per cent of the households surveyed saying they will buy computers then. This would mean 2.71 million more computers in China. |
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