Software for mobile devices and for social networking is an area with
great potential for software developers in developing countries.
According to the Information
Economy Report 2012 of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD), this year the focus will be on the role of software in developing
countries. Software is an industry characterised by relatively low capital
barriers for entry and its relevance is likely to remain high in the future.
In many developing and transition
economies, the public sector represents a key part of domestic software demand.
Its procurement of software products and services is often linked to tenders
for large-scale e-government projects. Beyond being an important creator of
domestic demand, the public sector can also play a catalytic role in spurring
innovation through public procurement related to e-government, e-health and
e-learning.
The expanding use of mobile
phones is creating new domestic demand for mobile applications and services
geared towards improving access to domestic news and entertainment, government
services, market information services and mobile money transfers.
According to ITU, there were 6
billion mobile cellular subscriptions in the world in 2011. Subscriptions per
100 people reached 86 globally and 84 in developing countries. The number of
users of mobile data services is significant and growing. Mobile data use is
also becoming significant in other developing countries.
The demand for mobile software
and applications is driven by two factors - the expansion of mobile broadband
networks and the emergence of smart phones and tablet devices. In 2011, the
global sales of smart phones exceeded those of PCs for the first time. Today,
although penetration is still relatively low, smart phones are rapidly being
taken up in developing countries.
The mobile applications industry,
a recent development, is estimated to have generated worldwide revenue of US$15
billion to $20 billion in 2011.
As of April 2012, more than a
million apps had been created, including 600,000 apps for Apple, 400,000 apps
for Android, and about 70,000 apps for the new Windows phone and many more are
in the pipeline.
It is clear that this segment of
the software industry is currently expanding at high speed. It predicts that
the market will grow to about $38 billion by 2014. Within the mobile apps
market, mobile enterprise applications are expected to be the next growth
driver as employees become more mobile.
This trend is particularly
relevant for developing and transition economies, especially hyper text markup
language 5 (HTML5) that is able to support different features, that is
platform-independent, and more robust in regions with limited mobile coverage
and low connectivity.
Apart from mobile device, social
networking is another key driver for software industry growth. More than four
out of five Web suffers, representing about 1.2 billion users around the world,
use social networking sites. Social networks are increasingly used around the
world. In addition, local social networking sites are also gaining in
popularity in countries such as China and the Russian federation.
Social networking creates
opportunities for developing linked applications, including games, music, and
social causes. More than 2.5 million websites have been linked to Facebook and
its users install some 20 million apps every day. It is estimated that the new
Facebook app economy has created between 183,000 and 236,000 jobs for programmers
in the US alone with an employment value of between $12 billion and $16
billion.
Asina Pornwasin
Business & Investment Opportunities
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