The United States remains firmly entrenched as the worldwide leader in technology innovation and startup incubation, according to an EIU report, “How technology sectors grow: Benchmarking IT industry competitiveness 2008“.
Three Asian economies made it to the Top 10 ranking. The report compares the overall competitiveness of the IT industry and environment in 66 economies.
Taiwan is now 2nd in global IT competitiveness after the US, leaping 4 rungs up from #6 last year. This improvement can be attributed to its strong performance in R&D (research and development) as Taiwan ranked top in the area of patents, generating one patent for every 2,000 persons.
The changes in methodology for the patent indicator, which weighted computing-specific patents, resulted in South Korea and Japan sliding to 8th and 12th positions respectively from 2nd and 3rd ranking last year.
Singapore is second only to the US when it comes to training and nurturing IT talents and ranked 3rd in the world for government support of the IT industry. The Republic climbed two spots to #9 overall this year.
The IT industry in the Asia-Pacific region is valued at about US$230 billion and comprises 348,000 tech businesses that employ 5.5 million people, according to the Business Software Alliance.
| Country |
Score |
2008 |
2007 |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 74.6 | 1 | 1 |
| Taiwan | 69.2 | 2 | 6 |
| United Kingdom | 67.2 | 3 | 4 |
| Sweden | 66.0 | 4 | 7 |
| Denmark | 65.2 | 5 | 8 |
| Canada | 64.4 | 6 | 9 |
| Australia | 64.1 | 7 | 5 |
| South Korea | 64.1 | 8 | 3 |
| Singapore | 63.4 | 9 | 11 |
| Netherlands | 62.7 | 10 | 12 |
| Switzerland | 62.3 | 11 | 10 |
| Japan | 62.2 | 12 | 2 |
