Taiwan’s IT Industry Ranks Second in Global Competitiveness

    IThe Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2008 IT competitiveness survey ranks Taiwan 2nd in the world and 1st in Asia, ahead of Japan and Korea. The survey, commissioned by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), covered 66 countries and evaluated six major indexes: overall business environment, legal regime, IT and communications infrastructure, supply of local talent, R&D environment, and government support for IT industry development.
Taiwan’s score in the R&D environment index was in first place, far ahead of other countries, and this was a major factor in putting Taiwan ahead in the overall ranking. Jeffery Hardee, BSA vice president and director, Asia Pacific, pointed out that Taiwan’s private investment in R&D reaches a high US$512 per hundred persons, second only to Japan with US$707; and that Taiwan has, on average, one IT patent for each 2,000 population, and the island leads the world in quantity of patent applications.
Taiwan is 27th in the world in the IT infrastructure index, with more than 60% of the island’s population being Internet users and 58 of each 100 persons owning computers. In addition, Taiwan’s mobile phone penetration leads the world, reaching 100% back in 2002. This achievement, plus the island-wide M-Taiwan project, shows that Taiwanese IT companies are taking the lead in WiMAX hardware and software services and that the island’s IT infrastructure will be even more completely developed in the future.
In the field of “legal regime,” Taiwan’s software piracy ratio dropped to 40% in 2007 and the protection of software intellectual rights is continuing to improve. Compared with the previous survey, Taiwan’s ranking in this index advanced five places to 27th in the world.

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