In two years, the Asia-Pacific will have more software developers than North America, as more firms send contracts out to the East or set up IT centers there, according to research firm IDC.
In choice of programming language, Asia-Pacific developers are in tune with the rest of the world: The majority sing in the key of C or C++, with a significant number saying they plan to learn the newer C# or Java soon.
The numbers released by IDC reflect a trend that began in 2001 when the Asia-Pacific's developer population, standing at 1.7 million, usurped Europe's second place position. The same year, the number of developers in North America actually fell.
"The economic downturn and actually caused a decline in the number of employed professional developers in North America from 2000 to 2001," says Stephen Hendrick, an IDC vice-president.
On the other hand, lower costs and a ready pool of skills in the Asia-Pacific has led to an exodus of development work out of North America, said Phil Hassey, an IDC program manager.
Not surprisingly, India and China lead the population boom. In 2002, China had 302, 988 developers, an increase of 42 percent over the previous year. India's grew by a smaller but no less sturdy 21 percent, with the population at 366, 854 in 2002.
Coming in third in growth was Malaysia. The developer headcount grew 13 percent, to stand at 16,512 in 2002. Singapore comes next with a growth of 12 percent and a population of 15,592. Hong Kong, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand come next with 9, 8 5 and 2 percent respectively.
Overall, the number of professional developers worldwide is expected to go up to 13.3 million by 2006 from 7.8 million in 2001, said IDC.
With India and China becoming a magnet for development work, are there reasons to pick one country over there other? Hassey of IDC thinks so: Software made in China can also be sold there.
"Both are similar in that they will save costs, but China is attractive also because of its marketplace," said Hassey. However, India will attract those looking for end-to-end, systems-integration software of a more sophisticated variety, he added.
"Indian companies like Tata and Wipro have moved up the value chain and can compete in the same field as IBM and EDS," he said.
However, he added that it will not take long for China to close the value gap with India. China also has a geographical advantage of being close to Japan, a large creator and consumer of IT services, he said. Hassey also observed that so-called second-level cities in India and China are also becoming strong centers of software development. In India, cities like Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai are contenders; in China, they are Shenyang, Hangzhou and Dalian.
"The Chinese government has to relieve migration pressures on Shanghai, Beijing and Guangdong," he said.
As in North America, the C family (C, C++ and the newer C#) dominates in Asia-Pacific. About a third of the world's programmers are using it.
IDC defines a professional developer as a paid professional who uses application development tools to build applications. Included are computer programmers and system analysts, computer engineers, database administrators, computer programmer aides, other computer scientists, numerical tool and process control programmers, operations, network and systems research analysts.
Play video
There are currently no comments for this post.