Santa Cruz, CA –(press release excerpt) — A new survey of over 700 developers in the People's Republic of China released today finds that the Chinese software development market is still largely in flux thus presenting opportunities found nowhere else in the world.

Although the largest group of Chinese developers still target Windows 9x, more than two-thirds expect to write apps for Linux in the next year. Even though the majority of Chinese developers still use older languages such as C++ and Delphi, almost 60% are using Java and a similar number expect to use message-driven beans from the EJB 2.0 spec. According to the new research, Chinese developers diverge from their Western counterparts in types of tools being used, security mechanisms and other significant areas.

The Evans Data Corp. Chinese Developer Survey found that two out of three respondents expect to spend some of their time developing Linux applications in the next year. Evans' comparable survey of North American developers found that only four in ten expected to work with Linux.

Although the study found significant enthusiasm for Web services development, Chinese developers are less likely to have made a commitment to proprietary computer languages being promoted as Web Services building blocks. While the likelihood of developers using proprietary languages such as C#, Visual Basic and ColdFusion was low, developers have no compunction about using proprietary environments such as Microsoft's Windows, the survey found.

“This survey suggests that the People's Republic of China, in addition to having the highest IT spending growth rate, is poised to be a highly competitive market, with opportunities to a wide range of vendors,” said Esther Schindler, Evans Data analyst. “The dominant market share some products enjoy in North America will not necessarily translate to the Chinese market where developers are actively evaluating a wide range of technologies, languages and tools.”

Other findings of the new study, fielded in May 2002, include:

• A high percentage of Chinese developers say their company has suffered a data security breach; 46.5% say such an incident has occurred (compared to less than 20% in North America). The most likely form of breach is a computer virus attack, followed by a deliberate hack into a database.
• The biggest problem in Web development, according to Chinese developers, is decreasing site development and maintenance time, followed by automation challenges. Personalization, which is extremely important to North American developers, is chosen as the 'biggest problem' by fewer than 10% of Chinese Web developers.
• Average years of programming experience diverges significantly between North American and the Chinese developers. The North Americans average over 16 years of programming experience whereas the average in China is four years.

The 250-page survey, which represents an important new geographic focus for Evans, examines platform use & migrations, language usage, Web services, security, Linux/OSS, general Internet development, Java development, architecture & technology adoption, and development issues & tools.

The survey provides numerous cross tabs of data against developer segment and industry to enable a close-up understanding of specific development areas. Evans Data clients are also given the opportunity to provide input to future surveys and to have additional cross tabs created to respond to specific inquiries.

 
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