First-Ever Survey of Mainland China's EDA Software Market Reveals Significant Potential

HONG KONG, March 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Global Sources Ltd. (Nasdaq: GSOL - news) and Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT - news, ITB - news) today announced the results of a joint study, Design Trends & Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Tools: China conducted by Electronic Engineering Times-Asia (EE Times-Asia), the bi-weekly design engineering publication and Gartner Dataquest the leading market research firm.

As Mainland China extends its electronic design capabilities, its market for EDA software is expected to demonstrate one of the region's highest Compound Annual Growth Rates (CAGR) of 30% during the five-year period ending 2005. The research, undertaken to identify current and emerging trends in China's design activities, was based on an online survey sent to more than 12,000 China-based design and test engineers. The respondents associated EDA software usage with their product designs across eleven industry sectors, including consumer electronics, computers and computer peripherals, datacom/networking, telecommunications and design services.

"This represents the first ever comprehensive study of Mainland China's nascent EDA market -- a market that is already closing on Taiwan in terms of its sophistication," said Mark A. Saunderson, Publisher of EE Times-Asia. "We have extended our partnership with Gartner Dataquest in order to define this important and large growth market for EDA software vendors worldwide."

According to Gartner Dataquest's Asia Pacific EDA market share report, published in June 2001, Mainland China is currently Asia Pacific's third largest EDA consumer, at 60% the size of Taiwan's market for EDA tools. "China will surpass both Taiwan and Korea to become the region's leading market by 2004, and more than triple its current value by 2005," said Gartner Dataquest Chief Analyst-EDA, Gary Smith.

The joint research shows that the highest penetration of EDA solutions is in the communications sector with 40% of survey respondents engaged in datacom/networking and telecommunications designs. Analysis highlights Mainland China's growing design sophistication: 22% of engineers design with more than 1 million Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) gates and 42% design with more than 20,000 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) gates. The study also indicates that China's design engineers play a key role in EDA tool purchases -- 60% of the respondents said their design-engineering department is involved in making the purchase decisions.

"The survey findings reveal that the design expertise and requirements in Mainland China are significantly comparable to those in Taiwan, currently the biggest market for EDA tools in Asia Pacific. This study gives a clear signal that the market in China is poised to rapidly grow and overtake some of the traditional buyers of EDA tools in this region," said Smith.

"Design Trends and EDA Tools: China is our second successful study in collaboration and partnership with EE Times-Asia. We conduct extensive worldwide EDA market research annually to report market shares, trends and forecasts, and to analyze user requirements," added Smith.