By Santosh Menon
PARIS (Reuters) - China and India may be great resource pools for some of the world's top technology companies now, but their rapid growth could spawn some worthy competitors in a few years, industry executives said this week.
European technology companies have tended to view the world's two most populous countries as cheap labor centers and increasingly even as potentially large markets as their economies grow.
But those stereotypes are changing.
"In five years, I can see the emergence of a Chinese software company," Leo Apotheker, Chief Operating Officer of Germany's SAP AG (SAPG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Europe's biggest software company, told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris.
China is already home to a large chunk of technology-based manufacturing, and industry experts believe it is only a matter of time before that capability seeps through in the area of software development.
"There are already Chinese software companies, operating in China; they are fast learners ... If there will be a large software company emerging in Asia, it is likely to emerge in China first," said SAP's Apotheker, adding that this company could be an even bigger threat than arch-rival Oracle Corp. (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).
India has already proved itself as a harbinger of that trend in software services.
India's IT companies have quickly moved up the value chain and have in fact become some of the biggest beneficiaries of technology outsourcing. Continued...
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