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| Asia/Pacific to Surpass North America in 2005 For Largest Share of Professional Developers Worldwide, Says IDC |
FRAMINGHAM, Mass., Feb. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- According to IDC, the number of
professional developers worldwide will increase to 13.3 million by 2006 from
7.8 million in 2001. 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.
In terms of individual languages being used by developers in North
America, C/C++ (as well as the newer Microsoft language, C#) still dominates
with 29% of the total. Java continues to gain ground, surpassing Visual Basic
to become the second most popular individual language with 18.1% of the total.
IDC also found that many developers are still using older 3GL languages, such
as Fortran and RPG, scripting languages such as JavaScript and Perl, and 4GL
languages, such as PowerBuilder and Progress, as their primary languages.
IDC defines a professional developer as a paid professional who uses
application development tools to build applications and must be employed in
order to be counted. Included are individuals in the following professions:
computer programmers and system analysts, computer engineers, database
administrators, computer programmer aides, other computer scientists,
numerical tool and process control programmers, operations, network, and
systems research analysts.
The IDC 2002 Worldwide Professional Developer Model study (IDC #28510)
provides a detailed model of the number of professional developers in 191
countries and six geographic regions and includes the primary languages in use
by developers in 2001 in North America: C/C++/C#, Java, Visual Basic, HTML,
and COBOL. Finally, the study addresses trends in the growth of these
programming languages in the near future, based on survey data collected by
IDC in 2002.
To purchase this document, call IDC's sales hotline at 508-988-7988 or
email sales@idc.com.
About IDC
IDC is the foremost global market intelligence and advisory firm helping
clients gain insight into technology and ebusiness trends to develop sound
business strategies. Using a combination of rigorous primary research, in-
depth analysis, and client interaction, IDC forecasts worldwide markets and
trends to deliver dependable service and client advice. More than 700 analysts
in 43 countries provide global research with local content. IDC's customers
comprise the world's leading IT suppliers, IT organizations, ebusiness
companies, and the financial community. Additional information can be found at
http://www.idc.com.
IDC is a division of IDG, the world's leading IT media, research and
exposition company.
All product and company names may be trademarks or registered trademarks
of their respective holders.
SOURCE IDC
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CONTACT:
Erin Traudt of IDC, +1-508-988-6920,
etraudt@idc.com
