It was only a matter of time before the center of the IT and computer programming world moved towards Asia. India has been providing a substantial proportion of the IT workforce in the US for many years, and low salaries and overheads in India itself has led to India becoming known as "the world's back office".

But it's not only in India, the world's second largest country by population.

In the world's most populated country - China - the IT industry is developing fast, with the major difference being that Chinese IT professionals are staying, or returning home, as the US and European IT markets suffer from downturns or slowdowns in consumer and industrial consumer demand.

And as a final third driver of the trend, North Asian countries remain some of the most advanced and innovative in the telecommunications and Internet industry worldwide. South Korea boasts a major proportion of the country with broad band or fast access, making this non-English speaking country one of the top 5 highest users of the Internet in raw numbers. Korean customers share with the Japanese fast uptake of new technology and the gadgetry of telecommunications.

According to an International Data Corp (IDC) Press Release dated 20th February, the number of professional IT developers in the Asia Pacific will outnumber their counterparts in other regions.

IDC estimates that the number of IT developers will increase to 13.3 million by 2006 from 7.8 million in 2001.

[extract] While North America remained the region with the most
developers worldwide in 2001, IDC forecasts that will change in 2005 when
Asia/Pacific will become the region with the most developers. Growth is
expected to be much stronger in Asia/Pacific than in North America over the
next five years, particularly in the world's largest countries, China and
India.

"The growth in the number of worldwide developers has been affected
dramatically by 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, Group Vice President for IDC's Application
Development and Deployment research. "This comes as no surprise since the
economic downturn has resulted in extensive layoffs among IT workers."

In 2001 Asia/Pacific overtook Western Europe for the number 2 position
with 1.7 million developers. The remaining three regions -- Eastern Europe,
the Middle East/Africa, and Latin America - accounted for a combined 1.8
million developers, or 23.4% of the total.

According to IDC, the 10 countries in the world with the most developers
are the United States, China, India, Russia, Japan, Canada, Germany, France,
the United Kingdom and Italy which represents 64.2% of total developers. IDC
believes that companies seeking to target professional developers can cover
the majority of the market by addressing these 10 countries.[end extract]