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Eastday
China's information industry will grow by 18.2 percent until 2007, doubling
its market size to 545.04 billion yuan (US$65.67 billion) by then, a leading
domestic infor-mation industry research firm said.
In its latest report, the Beijing-based CCID Consulting Lt
d also pointed out
eight hottest investment sectors in the industry - embedded software, middleware
software, management software, network security products, broadband con-tent and
application service, online games, digital consumer electronics and information
technology service.
"Each of these eight sectors has the potential of expanding its annual sales
by more than 5 billion yuan and maintaining a growth rate of more than 20
percent," said Liu Junguo, general manager with the strategy planning and
investment division of CCID Consulting.
Among the eight areas, embedded software industry is forecast by CCID as the
best bet. The sales of programs pre-installed in mobile phones, set-top boxes
and manufacturing machines will more than triple from last year's 11.86 billion
yuan to 37.37 billion yuan in 2005.
"The bullish performance of this sector is being pushed by China's sizzling
growth in manufacturing capacity, as most of these software are installed in
industrial equipment," said Liu.
Digital devices are also likely to offer good returns, the report said. Last
year, sales of MP3 players, digital cameras and flash-memory disks all doubled
that of 2001.
The report also anticipated China will join the US and Europe as the world's
three largest markets for information services. Sales will hit 140.1 billion
yuan by 2007, compared to 42.93 billion yuan in 2002.
Jing Huang, managing director of Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund, concurred
with CCID Consulting's list. "We have been very busy, as we have found more
candidate projects than we can handle," said Huang.
His company, a subsidiary of Softbank Corp, owned by investment tycoon
Masayoshi Son, manages US$400 million funds for Cisco System Inc and has
invested US$100 million on China's mainland in the first quarter of this
year.Guo Min
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