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Will China become number one in software outsourcing this decade?

I believe China will surpass India in terms of software outsourcing within the next ten years. Although India has a 20 year head start, the English advantage and a skilled workforce, they haven't made anywhere near the same level of investment in education, telecommunication and transportation infrastructure. Chinese schools are increasingly emphasizing English, which will erode one of India's main advantages, and the number of students graduating from Chinese universities with technology skills is skyrocketing - over one million are expected to graduate and find jobs at outsourcing firms by 2013. There are an estimated 1,200 R&D centers established by multinationals waiting for them.

India has plenty of good schools, a skilled workforce and a lot of experience in outsourcing, but their infrastructure has been severely neglected. Not being able to get workers from point A to point B and an aging network infrastructure is going to continue to dog India until their politicians wake up and realize there are a lot more outsourcing options now than there were 20 years ago. India has many fine engineers but apparently very few politicians with long term vision.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Leuck on October 24, 2010 at 5:24am

Thank you for the link Johnson. Map World is nicely done. I can tell from the page source (Javascript) it is heavily inspired by Google Maps :-), but they have added some nice features.

Its a shame companies in China won't be able to benefit from the many excellent services and toolkits Google has developed and, in many cases, made available for free to developers. A I mentioned on Dave's show, the educated population in major Chinese cities now move through the great firewall with ease via proxy servers, so there is really no point to recreating everything to keep the Chinese web pure. Every 15 year old computer geek in the country knows how to get around it and the more the government tries (and fails) to block them, the angrier they get.

Johnson Choi said:

A China government body has released its own online mapping service, designed to compete with Google Earth's popular satellite mapping service, that could spell more trouble for Google’s services in the mainland. Google and China have been at odds since last year, when a serious hacking attack originating from China prompted Google to ultimately withdraw its search service from the mainland. “Map World” was unveiled by the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping on Thursday, and can be accessed via www.tianditu.cn. The home page features an expansive view of the Great Wall of China, capped by clouds in the shape of the continents.

Will China become number one in software outsourcing this decade?

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