A year ago, the US technology market in terms of being a driver of future revenue growth was placed at third place. This year, the US market is placed at the top ahead of China and India, according to sources.
In contrast, the senior technology executives who were surveyed by sources, foresee a sluggish overall technology industry employment growth, in addition to bleak national economic recovery prospects as compared to what they saw last year; despite the fact that they expect sustained investment in mergers and acquisitions as well as emerging technologies.
The participants in the survey anticipate the most positive phase in terms of revenue and employment opportunities growth to materialize over the next 12 months. They also expect China, Brazil and India to trail the U.S. in revenue in the same order. In addition, India and China are placed second and third respectively in employment opportunities generation.
According to a survey conducted in 2010, the U.S. market was placed in the third position concerning anticipated revenue growth and fourth in terms of employment growth. However, technology leaders see the U.S. topping investment in research and development charts this year, while India and China follow.
Tech executives are also found to be optimistic about investment on the banking and retail sectors expected to come from the information technology industry. In addition, technology has been identified as the major target of investment in both the sectors.
77 percent of the technology industry survey participants anticipate a rise in revenue in their companies one year from now. This year again, technology executives believe that cloud computing will be the most aggressive revenue driver as far as the next three years go. As a matter of fact, 65 percent tipped cloud computing to be the major force as a revenue driver which represents a steep rise from 54 percent, the previous year. In addition, mobile applications and advanced data analytics grabbed the second and third ranks as revenue drivers, respectively.
With regard to merger and acquisitions, 8 out of 10 tech executives think their companies will get involved in the next two years. While 68 percent feel that their companies will likely be the buyer and 15 percent, the seller. In addition, 69 and 50 percents of those surveyed believe that new technology and products, and product synergies respectively will be the major factors driving alliances, mergers and acquisitions over the next one year. Apparently, this aligns with the tech leaders’ inclination to increase research and development, and acquisitions investment in the next one year.
Tech leaders, who expect their companies going for employment drives in the next one year, constitute 49 percent of those surveyed in 2011. In comparison, 42 percent of the companies actually increased headcount in the last year. According to a survey in 2010, 72 percent of executives had seen a rise in headcount over the next year; 27 percent asserted that their headcount had touched or exceeded pre-recession levels, in addition to 42 percent who said that the headcount in their companies would fall back to pre-recession levels over the next 18 months. Also, 21 percent asserted that their number of employees would never fall back to those levels.
