Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

In this chapter we concentrate on services closely related to the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. We have already dealt in Chapter 3 with the manufacturing sub-sectors related to ICT. One has to be aware that the division between ICT services and ICT-related manufacturing remains rather arbitrary, in particular because of the existence of large multinational enterprises (MNEs) that integrate these two activities. We used a ‘50 per cent plus’ rule here,1 which although objective remains arbitrary. Moreover, various publications and statistics, like the OECD Information Technology Outlook, combine reporting about ICT services and manufacturing. According to the latest edition of this Outlook (2010), ICT services and manufacturing sales fell over 6 per cent in 2009 in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, but for 2010 growth was expected to recover to 3-4 per cent. The OECD pointed out that the crisis sharpened the relocation trend for ICT manufacturing that had been under way since 1995 to 2008, resulting in a stagnation of ICT manufacturing growth in the overall OECD area. Where growth in the OECD area did take place, it was concentrated in South Korea and Japan. At the same time, the value added in ICT services in the OECD area as a whole grew by 6 per cent p.a. between 1995 and 2008, which in turn was stronger than that for value added in commercial services as a whole (4.8 per cent). According to the OECD, in 2009–2010 ICT services firms in the OECD area ‘weathered the crisis much better than manufacturing firms’. In particular Internet-related services have recently shown almost constant growth; for instance, even in the crisis year of 2009, sales of the world’s ten largest Internet firms increased by 10 per cent (OECD 2010).