HCMC – HCMC and Hanoi rank 17th and 21st respectively in the 2011 list of top 100 software outsourcing destinations, according to the latest report by the U.S.-based advisory firm Tholons.
By Van Oanh - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC – HCMC and Hanoi rank 17th and 21st respectively in the 2011 list of top 100 software outsourcing destinations, according to the latest report by the U.S.-based advisory firm Tholons.
HCMC’s ranking fell one notch, while Hanoi retained its position. However, there was a sharp decline in the ranking of the two cities against 2009, when HCMC and Hanoi were among top ten software outsourcing destinations.
Despite the downgrade in ranking, HCMC is still one of the top ten emerging global cities for software outsourcing. It is considered a potential replacement for China as costs in the neighboring country are on the rise.
One of the main reasons for that is that the salaries of IT employees in HCMC are 45-75% lower than their peers in Chinese cities.
The country obtained US$2.3 billion in IT revenue in 2011, according to the statistics from the Vietnam Software Association (VINASA). Software outsourcing and IT services have registered an annual growth rate of 25-35% over the last decade.
The software sector last year made up US$1.2 billion in total revenue, a ten-fold increase from a decade ago, said Pham Tan Cong, deputy head of VINASA. If adding revenue generated from digital content services, the overall revenue peaked at US$2.3 billion, or 25 times higher than a decade ago.
Nguyen Long, general secretary of the Vietnam Association for Information Processing, said he had not seen specific business performance figures of software outsourcing firms despite taking part in numerous IT seminars and keeping a close watch on the IT industry for a number of years.