1. According to the Ministry of Commerce, till the end of September, there had been 8,060 outsourcing enterprises nationwide, which had employed 1.421 million people; the outsourcing contracts conducted by the enterprises had reached a cumulative value of USD14.04 billion, of which USD10.9 billion was got from executed offshoring business. During the period between January and September, China witnessed an increase of 3,287 outsourcing enterprises and an increase of 585 thousand employees for outsourcing-related work, 398 thousand of whom were college graduates, and recorded a respective value of USD12.69 billion and USD7.34 billion in signed offshoring contracts and executed contracts, a respective year-on-year growth of 212% and 170.2%.

2. IDC and Microsoft have conducted a joint research on the contribution a country’s IT industry made to its economy. The report predicts that China’s IT expenditure in 2009 will reach RMB494 billion and that the annual increase rate of IT expenditure between the end of 2008 and the end of 2013 will be 10.8 per cent. There will be more than 15 thousand new local companies founded and 1.667 million jobs newly increased in the IT industry between December 2009 and December 2013.

3. Gartner has predicted that the value of global IT services will reach USD893 billion in 2010, USD510.5 billion of which will be contributed by outsourcing business. According to Mckinsey, the revenue of global outsourcing market will exceed USD150 trillion in the year of 2020, and the potential market scale of technological services offered by small and medium-sized companies will arrive at USD250 billion.

4. According to China’s Contact Center Outsourcing Industry: Opportunities and Challenges published by IDC, China’s call center outsourcing market recorded a capacity of USD605.2 million in 2008, a 21.7 per cent up from the previous year. IDC has also predicted that the market will maintain a 23.2 per cent five-year compound growth rate to reach a scale of USD1,718.8 million in the year of 2013.

5. TPI has claimed that the global outsourcing market has experienced its strongest third quarter on record. The 3Q09 Global TPI Index, which tracks commercial contracts valued at USD25 million or more, recorded 139 transactions during the just-completed quarter with a total contract value of USD24.7 billion. It was the highest quarterly TCV since the fourth quarter of 2008 and represented an increase of 21 per cent over second quarter 2009 and 40 per cent over third quarter 2008..

6. Asia Pacific’s enterprise software market revenue is forecast to total USD22.1 billion in 2010, reflecting a 10.2 per cent growth, according to Gartner. This represents an upturn from the expected 6.6 percent growth in 2009, which is a notable slow down compared to 2008 growth of 13.8 percent.  Nevertheless, Gartner still has a positive outlook on the Asia-Pacific five-year forecast period from 2008 through to 2013, holding that it will achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.8 percent in software expenditure, the highest of any region worldwide.

7. The worldwide security software market will total USD14.5 billion in 2009, an 8 per cent increase from 2008, according to Gartner. It anticipates the market to grow 13 per cent in 2010 as revenue will total USD16.3 billion.

8. In the Report on Changing Dynamics of Pharma Outsourcing in Asia, PriceWaterHouseCoopers reveals that the CRO market in China grew to USD260 million in 2008, reflecting a ten times increase from USD25 million in 2005. It has also anticipated that the figure will be up to USD430 million in 2010. China has surpassed India to become the first choice for R & D outsourcing in Asia.

9. According to the data released by Xi’an Software Park, in the first nine months this year, the Park recorded a total revenue of RMB24.64 billion and a export value of USD104 million, respectively posting a 40.08% growth and a 31.65 per cent growth over the same period of last year.

10. China’s Custom Commission has revealed a software export value of USD370 million recoded by Liaoning Province in the first three quarters this year, which constituted 35.2 per cent of the national total and up 64.5 per cent year on year. In terms of software export ranking, the province took the top position, superior to Beijing by USD80 million.

11. Custom Commission has announced that in the first three quarters this year, Shandong Province recorded a revenue of USD14.19 million in software export, which represented a 2.8 per cent rise from the same period of last year, with August witnessing the year-to-date record-high export volume and growth rate.

12. Till the end of October, Jiangsu Province had obtained USD3.28 billion outsourcing contracts, posting a 174 per cent surge from the same period of last year. The executed value reached USD2.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 192 per cent. Of the two totals, Nanjing had a respective share of USD1.19 billion and USD920 million; Wuxi contributed USD990 million and USD670 million respectively, while the contributions of Suzhou respectively stood at USD880 million and USD720 million. There had been 2,470 outsourcing companies registered online which employed 290 thousand people in total.

13. In the third quarter this year, Sichuan Province signed 390 software export contracts, representing a 51.8 per cent growth from the same quarter of last year. The contracts value exceeded USD 100 million for the first time to reach USD102 million, which represented a year-on-year growth of 184.6 per cent. Of the total value, USD 83.59 million came from the contracts that had been completed. The software outsourcing contracts and ITO contracts signed during the quarter respectively stood at a value of USD41.07 million and USD61.28 million, a respective increase of 260.4 per cent and 149.4 per cent over the same period of last year.

14. Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce has announced that from January to August Shanghai witnessed a dramatic increase of 44 per cent in software export to reach over USD600 million. Software export is increasingly becoming a significant growth point for Shanghai’s modern service industry.

15. The revenue obtained by Zhongguancun Haidian Park in outsourcing business (including ITO in the traditional sense and IT-intensive BPO) in 2008 reached RMB6.8 billion, making up 80 per cent of Beijing’s total and one third of the national total. The contribution of software offshore outsourcing stood at USD 467 million, which was an increase of USD100 million over 2007.

(Reproduced from "ChinaSourcing" magazine)